


sin and the sentence

by virtaux



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: F/M, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Shadowbringers Role Quests (Final Fantasy XIV), Tumblr: FFXIVwrite2020, it's just a lot of raw emotion, it's prefaced in the before notes though!, occasional/eventual 5.3 spoilers but they're tagged in the chapter if so, there's smut at some point, two dark knights try and cope with rage and loss and find each other along the way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 04:21:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 22,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26347024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virtaux/pseuds/virtaux
Summary: A collection of tales between two wayward souls from worlds apart that end up needing each other more than they'd ever expected.Prompts for FFXIVWrite2020, written between Granson of the Mournful Blade and Rax, the Warrior of Darkness. Shadowbringers spoilers are imminent; 5.3 spoilers and NSFW pieces are tagged and warned appropriately in the before notes of the applicable chapters.
Relationships: Granson/Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21
Collections: Final Fantasy Write Prompt Challenge 2020





	1. crux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 01\. CRUX   
> Granson takes pause to reflect before it's time. Rax recognizes the rage as he steeps in it, and extends a hand.

Light pours like rain, breaking through the cracks and leaving naught in its wake. An insufferable, infernal constant and when in direct opposition to the relentless brights of Il Mheg, a complication and a frustration. Granson couldn’t particularly recall stars in the sky or the blessed promise of night, but he’d do anything for it if it meant less strain on his eyes. All the light does for him is act as a reminder.

And then she comes. He’s suspected her from the start — who she is, why she’s here, what she’s doing. The Warrior of Darkness dons a blindfold, and he’s never once asked why in their journeys. None of his business, he decides; so long as she’s capable and willing, then it doesn’t matter. It was never selfish, not on that front; Granson could live with the light so long as it meant he’d have somewhere to go, something to do. Ever since he’d raised the sword to Milinda, and to the countless Eaters after her…

Calloused fingers clutch into a fist as he rests, as he tries to see past the blinding rage. Rax recognizes his aether — that same flaring, furious scarlet that consumed him whole. Something she understands too well on her own accord, but it’s also something she’s almost helped nurture in their journey. A mistake? An accident? An intentional harvesting of raw emotion, to prepare both of them for what they would have to inevitably do? She steps closer, and his eyes fail to move away from their focal point ahead of himself.

“Sul Oul is waiting for you,” Rax explains, pausing beside him although she elects not to sit. 

Granson rewards her with silence. Practiced silence, he reminds himself; it isn’t often she’s the one to talk over him, but it’s been months. They’re so close toward the end of the line, almost able to see beyond the red. What is there left to say? What is there left to do but to put blades to the test, to destroy what plagues him? To put a haunted, tortured soul to rest — not one, but two...

“Dikaiosyne will be there, Granson. All we have to do is go.”

The name causes his aether to howl, not unlike an injured wolf, crying out for help. Rax’s lips press into a tight line, but her hand extends toward him. She recognizes the pain; it’s a familiar ache in her own chest, and fog escapes her lips on the exhale as a small flicker of her aether slips in between to cool the area.

For a time, Granson doesn’t look at her. He can feel her there, an accompanying shadow on his quest. And that alone draws a low, nearly bitter chuckle from him. A shift of his body, a rustle of his armor, and his hand clutches hers as he drags himself upright, back onto his feet. His warmth counteracts her cold, and for a time he lingers before moving to adjust the claymore on his back. Rax turns on her heel to re-enter Pla Enni, a shiver clawing its way up her spine as his touch lingers even through the fabric of her gloves.

“Until the end, sinner?” he asks her again, and she can feel his eyes as they sear into her. They retain that warmth, but if she were to look, maybe she'd see how well he's swallowed his pride.

“Until the bitter end,” she reminds him, shifting so slightly to wait for him. He joins at her side and they step together into Pla Enni, hands brushing once, twice...

Granson can't thank her. Not now, not yet, but perhaps Rax already knows if the slight smile on her face is any indication.


	2. sway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 02\. SWAY  
> (verb) - move or cause to move slowly or rhythmically backward and forward or from side to side; (noun) - a rhythmical movement from side to side.
> 
> Rax doesn't believe Granson's never danced before. He has, but it's been a long time.

“You can’t tell me you’ve never danced before.”

There’s a tinge of aggression to Rax’s tone, albeit playful in nature. Her back is turned to him as her fingers work through the orchestrion, flipping through all of the different sheets of music that she’s gathered over her journeys. None of the songs feel particularly right, but she eventually settles on a steady-paced harpsichord thrum that dips into softer piano.

Granson makes himself busy as he props his claymore against the wall, idling by and considering his words. He spares a glimpse and eyes her as she turns. Her footsteps carry her right in front of him, and a quizzical brow of his own quirks as his arms fold across his chest. 

“I’ve danced,” he admits, offering a shrug, “but it’s been years now. Wouldn’t remember any of it. I’d be stumbling across the floor if—”

“Let me lead, then.”

A hand moves to pry and untangle his arms; he yields without much resistance. Rax’s fingers find their way between his own, and it is a push and pull. Her touch is cold, just like the rest of her; there is a steadiness in the way that the tide rocks, and Granson’s cheeks dust in a faint shade of pink barely visible in the dim lighting. Dancing brought back better memories, ones from a time long since passed. Before he'd picked up the blade proper, but he had never committed particular moves to memory, nor had he ever practiced. Just a simple sway to errant tunes that elders would play in the village, and little more than that.

But this, it’s a slow and steady back and forth. No words, but the music soothes the gaps in between. She’s thankful that she’d thrown open the window in the suite; it allows for the night to suffice as a backdrop. A different tone and a different feeling — she’s watching his eyes now, one of the few times since she’s taken the blindfold off that she’s been given the opportunity.

The sway ends up in slow rotating circles. One of Granson’s hands finds her hip and holds her there; Rax’s arm loops around his neck and in the end, he gives the other hand he’s holding a proper squeeze.

“Not so bad,” she chides in a tone barely over a whisper, the twinkling resonation of the harp in combination with the smooth resignation of the piano making an easy melody to move to.

“Could be worse,” he figures, but the smirk she’s showing is only reflected in a grin of his own. One more rotation, another sway, and he suddenly dips her down. It catches her off-guard, and it shows in the way mismatched eyes widen. A few long seconds of holding her there, and he pulls her back up with ease. “Or better, depending…”

It earns a scoff from Rax, who quickly adjusts her feet and quickens the tempo. Granson’s confidence flickers for a moment, moving to keep up with her. Her laughter fills the room as the winds outside whistle; peace has graced them for the moment, captured in the way they move.

“I can show you better… Come on. Keep up!”


	3. muster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 03\. MUSTER  
> (verb) - summon up (a particular feeling, attitude, or response).
> 
> Neither Granson nor Rax can sleep, and it's a good a time as any to talk about the inevitable.

The dead of night is often a time when Rax finds herself awake. Resting comes difficult no matter how hard-pressed she is to do so, especially after felling Hades and returning night to all of Norvrandt. Her chamber within the Pendants, pitch black and silent, feels less like a home and more like a tomb the longer she stays within it. Part of her is content to wallow in it despite the aches and pains of the aftermath; her eyes never quite adjust the way they do when she has the blindfold on, and yet…

A rap on the door draws her attention. It’s like deja vu; this is not the first time that someone has approached her in the middle of the night, and it won’t be the last. 

The Warrior shoves herself to her feet, gathers her bearings, and unlocks the door. The faint light from the hallway illuminates the side-profile of her visitor, who raises his hand in brief greeting.

“Can’t sleep either, sinner?”

Rax shrugs. “I guess I didn’t attempt hard enough. Come in.”

She steps aside, and Granson enters. He’s about to say something regarding the dark, but she flips on one of the lights so that it’s dim enough for it not to be blinding. He seats himself, and she’s already making busy heating up some water in a kettle. Cute little kitchenette that she’s never able to use, she may as well start somewhere.

“Word has it you’re leaving soon,” Granson begins after she turns, leaning against the counter and waiting for the whistle. His fingers interlock and place on the table; his eyes are trained on them rather than her, counting the small scars. “Away from Norvrandt entirely.”

Rax’s tongue clicks against the roof of her mouth. She weighs the words carefully in her mind. It’s been a long series of months. 

“That’s the intention. To go back home.”

It doesn’t feel right. It almost feels like a lie; the Source has nearly nothing to offer her anymore, not since she’d taken her own personal vengeance in the times between. The First had become more of a home to her than anywhere else. Granson can make something out of the lines in between, and it’s enough to push him up from his seat. He joins her at the counter, and his hands find her own despite the dark.

“I… have a request of you.”

Frayed ears perk slightly atop Rax’s head at his words. Granson’s thumb drags against her frigid skin, over her knuckles in a slow shift; he has a hundred questions, a thousand curiosities, and hardly any time to begin. Without the blindfold, it’s more difficult for her to see his aether. But she does note its faint thrum as compared to the blazing wildfire she’d seen it as before. Different, she thinks. Less of a beast to tame and more of a lull on the shore.

“I’m listening,” she replies, but she can feel her heart squeeze hard against her ribcage. A fierce ache she doesn’t expect. 

Granson takes his time. It’s a long period of silence. There’s a squeeze of her hands and then a sudden lift of his head; his lips press to hers in a sudden flare of desperation, of mustered courage, of broken-down walls. A plea in physicality, one that catches Rax off-guard but one she returns all the same, even as his body shifts closer, even as one hand reaches to cup her face, to stay there for a little while longer.

He breaks first. 

“Apologies, I…”

Rax’s free hand lifts, one finger pressed to his lips. Cold. She’s always cold, and she even tastes cold. Strange sensation. He enjoys it, he finds, but he says nothing and instead raises both brows at her action.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she assures him, and her hand just as easily pulls him in by the collar for another. Quickness, now. Rapid fire. The kettle whistles in defiance behind them. Her ears pin back slightly, sensitive to the sound, but she ignores it otherwise. Granson, for one, either doesn’t hear it or doesn’t care enough himself. He’s too focused on the feeling, the crash of waves, the hammer of heartbeats. 

“Then let me stay until you go,” he manages to speak in between, and he can feel her smile into the words, into the breaths, into the thrill. “Let me stay.”

Rax doesn’t answer. Not verbally — her clutch on his hand tightens, and she keeps him there like he’ll disappear if she doesn’t keep him close. She can’t afford to lose this flame, she thinks; it burns too brightly, too similarly and she has to hold onto it to keep her grounded in the blanks between. 

The kettle hisses its displeasure again, but the night unfolds, and it goes unanswered.

Perhaps, if they’re lucky, it’ll stay warm in the morning hours for a proper cup of tea.


	4. clinch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 04\. CLINCH  
> (noun) - a struggle or scuffle at close quarters, especially (in boxing) one in which the fighters become too closely engaged for full-arm blows.
> 
> Rax challenges Granson to some friendly sparring.

“Fists up.”

“What?”

“You’re not that hard of hearing, are you?”

Rax has never seen this type of thousand-malm stare from anyone, much less Granson, before in her life. It’s partly amusing if not for the fact that he looked like he’d just seen a ghost at the mere consideration. His reaction draws a sigh from her, and both of her arms raise as she prepares.

“I said, fists up. Let’s spar.”

“Maybe I should be honored you mark me worthy of being your sparring partner, o Warrior of Darkness.”

The color returns to Granson’s face once the reality of it settles in. Neither of them are clad in their usual armors, and their difference in height is negligible. But her strength is something far beyond his own, which he readily accepts despite it. A swivel of his shoulders and a crack of his knuckles, and his fingers furl into proper fists. He hasn’t had the opportunity to test her might himself, despite all the times he’s seen her on the field. It’s a fresh type of excitement.

“You’re used to close quarters, aren’t you? Make it count.”

“Is that a threat, sinner?”

Rax answers as her fists snap forward. The blows are deflected, and instead, Granson decides to take it a step further. His hands reach and catch hers, holding onto her, gripping tight as she attempts to push back. They struggle together in the middle of the floor for some time until he sees a break, and one of his hands instead snags her wrist and yanks her forward. Heads clash, and for a brief moment Rax sees stars in between her rapid fire blinking. 

Defending himself as any would. But she catches her balance and shakes her head free of the dizziness before rearing back and drawing a knee to his abdomen. Granson’s hold on her loosens, and Rax takes the opportunity to slide both arms around him in a tight hold. For a moment, confusion overtakes him. Is she… hugging him? It’s a maneuver that leaves him so off-balance that he doesn’t realize that she’s moving him along the way, forcing her weight forward and practically slamming him into the bed across the room.

Now it’s his turn to readjust, disoriented as he eyes the two copies of her above him, double vision not quite gathering how she’s sitting upright — albeit straddling his waist as she does so. But he can make out the smirk on her face once it all clears through.

“Got you.”

Granson’s hands move to grasp her waist and he shakes his head, adjusting himself with a clearing of his throat.

“Best two out of three?”

Rax pauses to consider and she shrugs; he jumps the gun on that reaction and gives her a squeeze, which causes her to laugh.

“I guess it’s only fair.”


	5. matter of fact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 05\. MATTER OF FACT  
> (adjective) - unemotional and practical.
> 
> !! 5.3 SPOILERS  
> But it’s not goodbye, she must remind herself; it’s a see you later, come back soon… Onto the next hunt.

“That’s it, then?”

The question hangs in the air, thick like fog and unrelenting like a storm. Granson’s words are tinged with distant vitriol, and Rax can hear it because she’s spent too much time around him. Even when duties called her away, even when the world seemed to swell and shudder between the lines, he was always the constant that she would come back to.

But now she’s facing the facts of it all. The end of the line. Granson had fought alongside her not so long ago, blades cleaving through spectral warriors from days long since past, fending off falling stars and offering succor where no one else could. And though Rax knew this day would come, the shifting horizon as it spins on its head and shows a new face, it’s far more difficult than any battle she’d come to know.

Emotions were always a weakness of hers. Impossible to wrangle, especially in complicated times like this. And the truth of the matter was that Rax couldn’t look at him. Too many heartbeats of silence passed without them meeting gazes. It doesn’t make Granson angry, but more so impatient; a fluttered line of frustration causes him to take a step and reach for her hand.

“Rax. I need you to talk to me.”

The skies overhead are crystal clear, soft blues that match the hue of her eye. The war is won. The fighting is done. It’s time to go back home. The Warrior of Darkness, as resolute as she tends to be, is somewhere between refusal and denial.

“The Exarch is gone. The Scions are going back. I have to go with them.”

The blunt manner of speaking doesn’t shock Granson. It does sting, but it all sounds par for the course. Rax turns her head to look at him afterward, and her expression betrays her tone. A frown cuts her face in half. Exhaustion is painted under her eyes, and a certain weight rests upon her that not even she can explain. He catches her hand, holds it for a moment, and draws a deep breath.

“...Will you come back? Can you come back?”

They’re easier questions than asking if he could go with her. Nowhere feels quite right anymore; it hasn’t since laying Branden to rest. Rax pauses, but she nods slowly and lifts his hand. Her lips press to the back of it and linger, letting the chill act as a reminder. 

“I can’t all the time. But I’ll be back. That much I can promise you.”

Relief floods him in a way that he can’t put words to. Crimson eyes soften, and he dips his head forward to steal a proper kiss. Soft, slow, hopeful — he only parts when he knows he’s overstayed his welcome, and when he knows she has to leave.

“Safe travels, sinner. We’ll hold the fort down for you.”

Rax lifts a hand, and she’s quick to turn away to make her way toward the Tower. The ache is unmistakable, and the tears that prick her eyes feel right, but it never gets easier to say goodbye.

But it’s not goodbye, she must remind herself; it’s a see you later, come back soon… Onto the next hunt.


	6. nonagenarian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 06\. NONAGENARIAN  
> (noun) - a person who is from 90 to 99 years old.
> 
> Rax often dreams of what the future might hold for them.

It comes in dreams. Distant flickers of what could be, should the years show kind to her. Should the stars, the Fury, and whoever else deems her good enough to survive until then, the dreams stretch far and wide into what those days could be.

_Grandchildren dance around in circles, giggling and playing, splashing about in a hot spring under close supervision. She feels as spry as she can in the chair she’s made a home out of more days than not, a solace for bones that are just too brittle and too achy to make use of otherwise. Her fingers are working through gentle weaving motions as she knits more mittens for the little ones, trembling as she goes._

_A ring glitters on her finger. A promise long since kept. Sometimes she’s asked about it. Sometimes she regales with an old story about two hunters who learned how to kill their demons. Sometimes her other half fills in the blanks with embellishments on his behalf, how he helped her rather than it being the other way around. And sometimes, she has to correct him._

_He greets her in the mornings with a series of kisses, as he has for the past however many years it’s been now. Forehead, nose, lips, hand, but not always in that order. He asks how the work is coming along and how she feels; she tells him rather well on both fronts. He corrals their grandchildren and sends them off and away from the pools, to where their parents await them inside the lodge, needing to do the chores for the day._

_“Clear skies. Peaceful, isn’t it?”_

_“It has been all week, love.”_

_“I like to keep you on your toes.”_

_They exchange smiles and another soft kiss, and then—_

Mismatched eyes flutter as she awakens in the middle of the night to the feeling of his hands moving, securing her against him in slumber. She lets out a quiet breath and adjusts herself accordingly, wiping a stray tear from her eye and settling in.

One day, he told her once; one day, it’ll all come together. One day, we’ll have it all, and one day there will be nothing to stop us.


	7. clamor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 07\. CLAMOR  
> (noun) - a loud and confused noise, especially that of people shouting vehemently.
> 
> Silence can be deafening.

The tension in the air is palpable. It hangs like a noose, and neither of them seem to want to face each other. From behind the blindfold, Rax sees Granson’s aether as it flares and sputters. It surges and reaches out, wanting to set anything and everything around him aflame. For a mercy, it cannot penetrate her cold. Her glacial disposition protects her from the pain, especially as she forces up the emotional barrier.

He had sought her out to talk about their next step. They’ve come to a disagreement. Rax has murdered another innocent for the sake of these Voeburtite relics, and more still will there be. More ivory viscera has she cleansed from her blade than she cares to admit. Sin eaters who were once human, who had families and ties. She doesn’t tire of ending their suffering, but she does wane when they’re getting no closer to their mark.

Granson, above all else, knows his duty. He understands what it is like to have loved and to have lost; he understands what it means to force the hand of mercy. To have implications that he isn’t doing his damndest to make every step forward stokes the flames. But there is no verbal argument, not particularly; it is the silence that deafens, the silence that roars, the silence that breaks through, the silence that swallows until it’s nothing but a bottomless pit of stewing emotion.

Neither of them yield. Two stubborn hearts, swarmed by their own personal furies, refuse to make amends. Somewhere under the tempered surface, there is guilt and there is shame. But it’s impossible to dig out when the quiet is deafening. They’ve been in each other’s midst for months now, and they’ve shared this sort of expanse in comfort. But the gravity weighs down on both of them, almost to the point where Rax can see the subtle shifts in aether aside from the obvious wildfire blazing, howling behind her.

Granson crackles. He smolders. He hardens, but then another spark ignites and it’s another cycle. Rage this unkempt, this unchecked is dangerous, and it is when the scarlet hue slowly begins to wind down that Rax finally makes a turn on her heel.

Both arms loop around the mourner’s frame. The Warrior’s pride cracks. The arctic forcefield lowers, and the inferno comes rushing in. He’s visibly startled, beside himself that she would have the gall to even try, but the rush of cold begins to make him simmer.

They stay like that for a while.

The quiet turns into little more than a soft whisper.

_“We will see this through.”_


	8. lush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 08\. LUSH   
> !! NSFW and a tiny, tiny bit of body horror.  
> (adjective) - (of a woman) very sexually attractive.
> 
> Granson takes his time trying to capture the light of one of Rax's new prominent scars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW warning for vaguely written/implied smut. There's also some very brief body horror-esque explanations regarding her spine and how this scar came to be! Sorry if it makes any a little squeamish.

It is not the first time clothes have hit the floor, but more often than not when they tumble between sheets, there’s something on that neither of them particularly care to discard. There is always time to do so, but emotions laugh in defiance of the inconvenience it would cause. 

A slow day burns into a slower night. Armor thumps against the floor once blades are set aside. The last piece of fabric to go for her is always her blindfold; he takes care of the various layers that comprise up his chestpiece. Somewhere between aches, pains, laziness and apathy, the pile on the floor is neglected in favor of the two meandering toward the washroom.

The light clicks on and then lowers. A swift turn of the nozzle and the water begins to cascade, pending higher temperatures with adjustments. But with that business out of the way, it’s easier to focus on the important aspects at hand. His hands are warm as they take her waist, and from a slight lean of his head to the side he can see that his skin is illuminated by a faint glow. 

“Is it always like that?” he asks as her arms coil around his neck, closing the distance between them off.

“Ever since it happened,” she murmurs, softness matching that which curious hands roam.

The Warrior is momentarily untangled so he can turn her around. She has a plethora of scars that cut into her body. A subtle curve of her hips, but the definition of muscle in between; she’s trained for years and it’s chiseled into her body. The markings upon her are ones that he’s traced before, warm fingers trailing over cold skin and over sensitive reminders of the past, but he’s never asked her about the one that cuts down her spine like this before.

Consequences of nearly becoming an unstoppable Lightwarden make a show on her body in an eternal way. With what light she still retains, and how her spine had nearly deigned to tear out from her back to form what would have been her wings, the bones have awkwardly nestled back into their original positions. But now they’re tainted with the dim light that’s cursed Norvrandt for too long, and the phantom pains that arise from the feeling are occasional. 

When his fingertips begin at the bottom of it and slowly tip-toe their way up, she has to take pause. There is no warning and there is no fear; he treats her gently as if she would break under too much pressure. An exhale leaves her, slow and steady. The light shudders faintly in reaction to outside touch, and with it, so does the frigid aura that emanates from her. A little colder. Direct correlation, he notes. It draws a half-curious, half-satisfied ‘hmm’ from him.

“...What is it?” she asks, but she doesn’t get an answer by the time his hands slide back down to her hips. He’s making busy, lips pressing at the top of the scar and making its way down. Butterfly kisses, fluttering and hardly there at all but enough for her to be _certain_ to feel it, make a steady trail. Her thighs buckle together in surprise and her nails dig into her palms, uncertain of where else to reach.

Perhaps back then, before they’d laid slain Dikaiosyne together and put Branden to rest, he would have held distaste for the scar. Less of a sinner and more of a virtue, he might have called her. But there’s nothing but a rushing heartbeat, a need to prove something, and a wistful desire to show off his adoration for the new things he’s learning about her body.

A low echo of “ _c’mere, sinner_ ” vibrates against her skin, and his hands become greedier; one shifts between her legs and the other eases her back against him once he draws himself back to an upright position. Close as can be, friction warranting; the water cascades behind them and his fingers glide easily between, inside, slow and steady while the other drags across her stomach, up her torso, over her breasts, to her throat. He counts her pulse. He tilts her head back, mindful of her ears as they flatten to make way. Her touch follows, holding his wrist before he muffles a moan with a proper kiss this time.

Heat flares. It breaks through every layer of cold as his fingers work her, testing her, feeling her. In between kisses, they both share soft gasps of breath but he’s gradually backing them up, in toward the shower. He helps her over and she backs herself into the wall, flipping positions as she pulls his wrist. Her hands smooth two-toned strands from his forehead before they cup his face.

“Better?”

He shrugs with a half-smirk as he drags her leg up, stepping inward, holding her against him. Her head rests back against the tile, and from that angle he can see every slope and every nick, every scar and every curve. He takes his time marveling, making a mental memory of the little things. How there’s a cut that pulls over her left breast and down the middle; how there’s a fainter one that crescents against her rib cage, almost glittering in the dim light. 

She’s seen him take her in before, marvel at her like she’s a painting; it’s part flattering and part surprising. In all the nights they’d spent nearly nude together, he’s never spent this much time reminiscing over every little detail. But the way his eyes focus, how his fingers drag against each one to remember the feeling and the shape… It makes her heart growl, and the heat he’s instilled in her creates a flush of scarlet across her cheeks. It defies her usual state of constant chill.

The sudden swiftness to which his hand raises and cups her by the chin, in which his thumb drags across her lower lip before he kisses her — it steals her breath away and keeps it hostage, especially when he’s suddenly inside in the same movement. One easy roll of his hips and there’s part of him that wants to bruise her in his clutch, but he’s reverent of her; not because she’s the savior, not because she’s the symbol of all recent hopes and dreams, but because it would be an addition to the story on her skin. Not a stake of claim, but an eager gift. 

Ravenous kisses drown out the heated breaths and groans in between; bodies mesh underneath steady pulses of water. Her nails claw down his back but she finds difficulty figuring out where she wants to touch him. It’s not her choice when he pins one wrist above her head, too busy keeping the tempo to find the other which pushes through dampened teal strands, gripping, holding, desperately keeping him close.

Closer. Closer. _Closer,_ and over the edge in waves that leave both of them shuddering and gasping for breath. 

They stay like that for a while. The afterglow is a reverse burn. It starts white hot and ends black cold; not only have they used all of the hot water, her aether bristles in defiance of being forced into submission for so long. The next kiss she gives him is cold, and she can see his face scrunch up in shock as his hands fumble to help wash her hair.

“Not used to that yet?” she asks, tone further graveled than usual from all of her muffled vocalization.

“Might never be,” he admits, partly in jest as he scrubs the soap through her hair, careful with her ears, and taking his time to wash it out. Even if he’s shivering, he sees his job through.

It’s likely the first shower they’ve taken together that’s ended in more marks than it started with. He sports new thin, reddening marks down his back and diagonally across his chest; her hips are reddened from a vice grip, a refusal to let her free. When dried off and in bed together, mingling between the sheets, he keeps a momentary distance from her and pauses.

“It’s beautiful, you know,” he tells her after she flicks the light off. She’s the only source in the room. It reminds him of fireflies he’d read about in books a long time ago. His fingers once more gently glide along the center point at the small of her back and up, up, up, noting her shudder of sensitivity. “I’d say it suits you, sinner.”

She settles her head comfortably against the pillow, eyes closing as he traces patterns into her. Lines. Swirls. Shapes she can’t name. The smile on her face is as dim as the glow he’s trying his best to capture between his fingertips.

“It’s good to know someone can appreciate it.”


	9. avail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 09\. AVAIL  
> (verb) - to help or benefit.
> 
> In the dead of light, Granson saves Rax as she falters.

In the downtime, in the cracks between where they’re unable to proceed due to one thing or another — this is the Warrior of Darkness he’s dealing with, he knows, and he can’t have every second of her day — their paths occasionally cross. Sometimes it’s intentional. Granson seeks her out on his own accord when he can follow the rumors of where she’s gone, unable to take the saccharine sweetness of Il Mheg or the lonely, jagged cut of Amh Araeng’s hills. 

Sometimes he strikes lucky.

Sometimes it’s harder, seeing her crumble under pressure and seeing her as change forces its greedy fingers in and twists her with unbridled fury. _Familiar,_ he notes, stewing in the feeling as he thinks about it. It snaps back and he recoils, rubbing his knuckles over his jaw. All part of the same cycle.

But this time Rax is bent at the knee near one of Lakeland’s shorelines. A place often teeming with stray activity; he frequents it for some coin in the downtime, using it as a redirection for the emotions he’s uncertain how to handle. For now, Granson has decided to fashion it into a weapon and unleash it in broad swings of his claymore. It’s done well enough for him; he gets to show off his new polish as his greaves become slick in the shallow water. He charges forward, his whole frame plunging as his blade flies in an overhead arc to spare the unassuming woman, panting and _choking_ beside it all. The sin eater, claws having risen and prepared to show her just how holy it was on the other side, shattered and scattered into the distant breeze.

“Wicked white, sinner. What’s gotten into you? Any later and you may have been turned.”

Rax’s ears catch his words and the clang of his blade as it makes inevitable contact. But they’re pinned low against her head as her hands fumble in front of her. Even in the perpetual dark of her blindfold, her aethersight wavers. Granson is never hard to see—he’s so bright and so constant, a signal fire to lead her home—but she’s never had a flare like this. Not yet.

A retch and ivory viscera, glowing with the consistency of paint, spatters across her fingers and mingles in the water where it misses. Hard to control the spray when it feels like saints are trying to tear their way free from your throat, to give voice to the voiceless.

Milinda. Granson remembers. It’s more of the same, but this transformation is slower. He’s heard horror stories about the touch and how it changes people. He’s killed his fair share of virtues, and for a moment he has to wonder — has he been infected like this, too? Would he know? He hadn’t been touched, but neither had Rax—

“...I’m fine,” she attempts to reassure, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand as she pushes to her full height. The weight of her armor seems to hang heavier.

He doesn’t take it for an answer. He doesn’t know how to fix an impending change, but he also knows he can’t stomach to see her or anyone else he cares about go through it again. His fingers, having balled into a fist so desperate his nails cut crescents into his palm, tremble briefly before he catches himself. Not again. Never again.

Granson’s arms make easy work. They sweep the Warrior off of her feet. Her armor makes for a more difficult hold, but he manages as he begins his trek toward the Crystarium. It’s not the shortest haul, but the kindling in his stomach is fuel for the furnace that blazes its sorrows and its determinations. 

Rax’s lips part in aim to protest. But it feels as if she’s been wrung out to dry, as if light has sheared through her muscles and seeped into her organs and has painted everything white. Even in her self-imposed darkness, specks of light creep in and blind her for a time. 

How much longer would she have been able to stay like that? Without him, perhaps she would have been another for him to mercy kill, another empty grave to mourn—

_Ah._

By the fury of his willpower, Granson makes it back to the Crystarium in record time. The new promise of night was beyond the horizon as they passed Tessellation, past the aetheryte plaza, and to the right. No doctor could cure this, no matter how Chessamile may have argued otherwise. One of his hands moves to wipe some of the excess off of her lower lip, thumb catching the substance and causing him to grimace.

Pride swells for a moment. Rax yields with a hollow exhale.

“I owe you,” she mutters.

“And you will again,” he quickly replies in turn, gesturing for the Master of Suites to open her room for them. He raises both brows but makes no fuss as he procures the master key, quickly striding off with the couple in tow.

Granson lays her down and waves the man off, no matter how badly he wants to confirm that their darling Warrior of Darkness is alright. An urge to reach up and pull that blindfold off washes over him, but he resists. What if it was the last time? What if he wouldn’t have been able to thank her properly, without seeing her eyes, without feeling all of that emotion and wondering what all she had seen herself—

“I got too ambitious.”

“You don’t say.”

“You’ve helped me. You’re done here. You can leave.”

“ _Leave?_ You expect me to leave after that? The least I’m going to do is make bloody sure you won’t go through another episode of hacking up light!”

The loudness of his voice surprises even himself. Granson scoffs quietly and takes a step back from her. Rax is witnessing a wildfire that’s feeding off of itself, swirling with black, a familiar hue.

“If it’s our agreement you’re worried about, don’t be. This won’t happen again.”

And she says it with such a firm conviction despite the low cadence that not only does it cause his eyes to widen and soften, but it douses the flame only enough for him to back down.

“I’m keeping you to your word, sinner,” Granson levels with her, tone returning low, “but should you get back to this point, what I will do to you can’t be considered mercy.”

Rax processes his words somewhere between a threat and a promise, sorrow and rage. Defensive maneuvers, to protect himself from unnecessary pain, no matter how much blood would flow down the river.

“So be it.”

She takes her potential fate in such stride that when she loosens the pauldrons from her shoulders, when she sheds the outer layers of her armor and rolls onto her side to rest, Granson has to take pause and watch and make sure she’s not closer to turning than he thought.

He doesn’t see any more light, save for the faint smudge across his fingers.

When he leaves, lacking any other words for her yet having her own ring in his head, ricocheting and resounding and deafening — Granson can’t curse the blessed night as it holds him. 

He merely reflects and twists and aims the loaded gun at Dikaiosyne in his mind’s eye, and he comes to the realization that with or without her, he will see this through sooner rather than later — because even _he’s_ not so sure he can stop the anger from making a beast out of him.


	10. ultracrepidarian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 10\. ULTRACREPIDARIAN  
> (adjective) - expressing opinions on matters outside the scope of one's knowledge or expertise.
> 
> “Someone has to know something about your soul.”

“Far be it from me to offer you advice on this…”

The heft of Granson’s claymore moves from a clutch in his hands to a rest on his shoulders. Its thin appearance is deceiving, as the metal used gives it weight that keeps him balanced. Its size coincidentally makes it easier to one-hand, but he’s not that practiced to where he can do it consistently.

His eyes regard the mangled corpse of one of the bigger eaters on the floor, and one of his greaves shifts forward to nudge it. It flops over with no resistance, its form struggling to maintain shape as it shimmers. Had it been anything else, it might have been beautiful in its death.

“Your struggles evade me because of what little you’ve said. Not that I’ve asked. None of my business when compared to our mission. But I know a pensive look when I see one.”

On the outside, it may not look like Rax is attentive. It’s difficult to gauge when both eyes are constantly blanketed by her own self-imposed night, which is a luxury no one else from Norvrandt can enjoy unless they make the decision to be blind. Her aethersight is a blessing, but less so when the unstable essence of a sin eater is rigged and ready to blow. It’s overthrowing the constant burning embers of Granson’s energy, and so her lips are pulled into a tight line as she tries to focus. Her head lifts. She can see him between the light smoke.

Good. She _is_ listening. 

“You’re looking for answers. Hunting them. You’ve told me that much. All of this, it’s all for your own selfish ends. Whatever you are, whoever you are, what happened to you…”

At their feet, the sin eater yields. It does not go peacefully, even past its expiration. Bits and pieces of it swell before they shatter. Inky light, its lifeblood, sprays across their feet. Its maw slackens and its tongue lolls out of its mouth before its head goes next, and—

Granson sighs and the waving gesture of his hand, one that Rax catches just in time, causes her to step backwards some ways. Knuckles shift white as he grips his weapon, raising it above his head and then bringing it down. What’s left of the corpse as it’s cleaved through bursts into spectacular sparkles of shimmering light, caught by the winds of Kholusia’s shoreline.

Enough of that.

“Someone knows something. You aren’t alone in this, sinner. Your problem runs blood-deep, _soul-deep_ , and someone has to know something about your soul.”

Rax’s focus is aimed at where the eater was. Its blood is still actively dripping off of her armored legs and onto the sand; she can see it clearly and whereas once it may have made her stomach twist, now she doesn’t feel anything at all. Nothing but the numbing cold. Her sense of normal. 

Granson doesn’t like the look on her face. How blank and empty she seems, devoid of emotion. Was it the topic, or was it the eater? It’s another stray from the bigger picture. It’s nothing to be caught up in. But he doesn’t want to step on toes; he doesn’t want to poke the bear. He shrugs and mounts his claymore upon his back after eyeing the expanse of the shoreline.

“If you don’t care about what I’ve got to say, you can tell me. Business can be business, and we’ll leave it at that.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I told you that I didn’t. I wanted to offer my piece, for whatever it might’ve been worth.”

Rax takes pause. He _did_ warn her. But then her mind reels back, mulls over his words as she turns to face the water. A few steps inward, and the waves begin to lap over her feet. They wash away the viscera, and it streaks but eventually fades away. A deep breath of the salted air. Her arms fold. And she thinks, her back turned to her partner, her eyes closing underneath the fabric.

“Find me in Wright when you’re done.”

It’s a good choice of his to let her go. Granson stays for a few moments, as if waiting for her to acknowledge him. He doesn’t get a reply, not even as her hand moves upward to adjust the blindfold on her face. _Attuning to the dark_ , she had told him. Nothing more, nothing less. He lets it go. And his footsteps crunch against the sands as he goes.

“Someone knows something…”

The Warrior’s words escape her in a mutter, parroting what the mourner had told her. He may not have understood the full scope, but something about that tugs at her heart. Where? Who? Why? And what else could she do here to help herself? Could she help herself in a place like this, so far away from home, from his grave, from the kindlings of his work—

Her hand reaches out and her aether pulls frost across her gloved fingers. It dances along, reacting to emotion and to thought. But just as quickly as its beauty rises, she snuffs it out and closes it into a fist, melting the creation.

An adjustment of her weapon, and Rax turns to reconvene. Clearer thoughts, but now they’re embraced by a fresh kind of anger. The anger of not knowing. The anger of not knowing where to _begin,_ and much less so to end.

 _There is no rest for the wicked,_ she reminds herself as she makes way into the village and toward the teal-haired hunter, _and now is not the time to find my peace._


	11. tooth and nail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 11\. TOOTH AND NAIL  
> !! NSFW.
> 
> He’s hoping she’ll catch on fire if he keeps her close enough. Burn with him and maybe she’ll stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's smut. It's just an excuse to write gratuitous rough sex, honestly. Woops.

“You need to figure out a way to let out all of this steam,” Thancred spoke up after pulling Rax to the side. “Aggression is one thing on the field, but you’re looking more like a monster. Ryne is beginning to worry.”

Ryne is always worried, she thinks. The idea to snap back is there, loaded up and ready to fire. Instead, she breathes in sharply, exhales glacially, and yanks herself away from the gunbreaker’s touch without a single word. He’s right. But the solution is never as easy as it seems, not on the outside.

The frustration isn’t easy to pin down. There’s a number of reasons, most of which evade her. The most time she’s spent with anyone lately seems to be the Exarch, Y’shtola, and Urianger. All three are keeping a check on her aether, accompanied by Ryne on occasion as she gauges the light that she’s been made to absorb. Before Hades, Rax was little more than a ticking time bomb ready to explode. After, the Oracle has caught traces still within her. And sometimes it fluctuates despite everything. Being examined and spoken to like an experiment has left her tired and irritable, but it runs deeper than that.

And unfortunately, it’s a feeling shared. 

The Warrior is pulled away with swiftness. A surprised grunt muffles, and for as blindsided as she is, there’s an overwhelming mix of relief and panic at the sight of who.

Granson. _Shit._

Actively avoiding him hadn’t been Rax’s intention, but after they’d finished what they meant to do and as she delved deeper into trying to figure out how to go forward, they’d gone their own ways. Occasional communication, but Granson was tired of the Crystarium. Tired of Lakeland, tired of Il Mheg, of Amh Araeng, and even of Kholusia. The work wasn’t difficult to find but there was no challenge, no thrill, no purpose. He’s free of his burdens, free to let go and to relearn how to live out amongst a very new world, but some things aren’t so easy to erase.

“Would you slow down? Where are you even— Listen to me!”

He doesn’t. 

Rax nearly trips over stairs as she’s tugged along. She’d been caught so off-guard that the area around them blurs and she’s uncertain of which way Granson’s taken her. The bricks advise her of the Pendants, but they’re marching upstairs instead of across, into a room she’s unfamiliar with, and then before she knows it she’s up against the wall, pinned.

“What are you—”

It’s been over a month with nothing. No words, no glances; their paths haven’t crossed and neither of them had attempted to seek each other out, despite inward feelings and desires. Rax is certain she would remember the look that he gives her right now — teetering between anger and desperation and carnal need. Wildfires. Embers. He’s hoping she’ll catch on fire if he keeps her close enough. Burn with him and maybe she’ll stay.

Granson’s used to his lonely, but sometimes it tips over the edge and when he kisses her, hot and hard and over-the-top to the point where it feels almost bruising, emotions burst. There is unresolved tension on both sides. No communication, no reaching out, no attempt to find the other; they’re both correct in their anger that’s coming to a head, but it all could have been avoided, couldn’t it?

Or was the intention to get them to a boiling point? 

Somewhere in the haze, Rax realizes two things: one, that this might be his room that she’s never heard him talk about nor has she seen before, and two, that clothes are being pulled off. Torn in some places. She recognizes the latter when his hands make home with her skin, warmth melting off her instinctive cold and feeling along. 

Any new scars he should know about?

Granson takes pause from kissing her only to lower his head and sink his teeth right into her pulse. Feel it thrum and shudder and leap. His love often isn’t this aggressive, it doesn’t burn or ache like this. It’s gentle like the cradle of the moon in the sky, something new and fresh and sweet, but now it’s nothing but brimstone and hellfire and the smoke that comes in its aftermath. His hands make way to claw up her sides, digging up and then down again in a carnal need to _have her_.

And Rax lets him, because he deserves his time to let this out. 

Her whole body arches into his, sensitive to the touch. It’s a series of his bites along her pulse, down her neck, to her shoulder. His tongue washes over each one with almost an apologetic regard for a split second of relief, and then he goes right back to making his mark. His hands test the waters between, scarred fingers brushing up against her folds and wondering if this was what she preferred.

But the Warrior does not go quietly; among all of her muffled moans and gasps, questions of “ _what the hell is this?_ ” and “ _gods, wait a minute_ ” and “ _wait, back there, don’t stop, fuck_ ”, she finds her ground. With his back exposed, she gains the opportunity to reach in and dig her nails into his flesh. He’d given himself his scars, but with these marks he was inflicting on her, who was she to be denied the right to give him some of her own?

Granson hisses in between as his fingers press into her, rushing with reckless abandon. The pain, pinpoint as it is and lingering, inspires him to ramp it up. With every few pumps he stops, thumb grazing in slow and steady circles to make her squirm, and she does. Her face is awash with heat, and her free hand reaches below so her fingers can glide around him and stroke. Reciprocity. Something to keep her grounded, and it _works_ when she feels his breath shudder into her skin. 

“Too long, sinner,” he growls into her, going on to make a quick switch. Her back exposed to him now as he turns her around, he realizes it’s a whole new canvas. Save for the scar of light that splits right down her back (which, he wonders, could he mark over?), he has all the opportunity in the world to remind her why she shouldn’t leave. Why she should stay. Just how he feels.

And so he begins, but not before positioning himself and pulling one of her arms behind her back for leverage. 

“It wasn’t— I didn’t—”

Rax can’t get words out by the time he’s fully inside her, and it’s for the better. At first it’s a whimper between grit teeth, then her moans turn sweeter as the rhythm begins. Her core, coiled and blazing, receives him just the same. Too long. He’s right, she knows. But it makes the way he fucks her better, as she can feel the longing. How pent-up he had been — she relishes in it, and although she can’t see the mark she’s made on him with her face pressed against the wall, she knows it’s there and it gives her a sense of pride.

Pride that’s knocked down a few pegs when his teeth make their home on her shoulder again. Lower. Near the scar, which makes her jump in place out of sensitivity. And she tightens for it, which he learns quickly and sears it into his memory. Each bite, sucked upon and rolled over with his tongue, stokes the flames. And they’re getting too hot to handle by the time he makes it across.

“Inside. You _better_ come inside, after… after all of this…!”

Was she in the place to be making demands? Rax isn’t sure. Granson is all too glad to oblige, however, his hips snapping forward, nestling full against her and inside her and then it’s nothing but white when the dam breaks. It comes in steady waves, and her orgasm doesn’t quite hit until she feels his breath against her icy skin, until she can hear him swear under his breath, until he’s nearly done and the warmth is too much for her to take.

The afterglow is temporary. Fleeting. He loosens his vice grip on her arm and takes her hips instead, staying inside of her, relishing in the feeling as she comes back down.

“Not done yet, are you?” the Warrior asks, tone _bitter_ as her head turns. Black fringe sticks to her forehead from the sweat they’ve worked up, and his eyes shift up. Half of a smirk curls on his lips and he leans forward to steal a kiss from her. Lingering. He still tastes like smoke, like rainfall, like home.

“As far as I’m concerned, we’re going all night.”


	12. part

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 12\. PART  
> !! 5.3 SPOILERS AHEAD.
> 
> You're so fucking sick of the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to try something different with this prompt. I think I really like it. Maybe I'll experiment more like this in the future.

**PART ONE.**

The last time you see her alive, full and hail and whole in the flesh with a beating heart that once coincided with your own, she is smiling. 

She tells you it’s alright now. She tells you that it’ll be okay. She tells you this with tears in her eyes as she begins to choke on blood, as the light blesses her and changes her.

You stare at her as she ascends. Holy women, you were told, often weren’t meant to be trusted. Often would they gallivant about with the men in the village to pass rumors. 

But this holy woman is your wife, and this holy woman is your monster, and this holy woman is your responsibility.

You show her mercy.

And you slit your face in half like the smile that dared to touch her lips at the end.

**PART TWO.**

Part of your hair has greyed. Stress, a witch told you. Rapid aging. Consequence of the trauma. “Trauma” sounds like what it’s meant to convey: broken, not all there, the croak of a guitar as it hits the wrong pitch. You’ve tried to write a song for her. You’ve never gotten it right. And it ends the same every time.

But your heart burns, and you can still feel the warmth of light on your skin. You can still feel how she died. You can still feel how she smiled. You can still feel how the blood spattered, how the crimson was more like fresh paint on what would have been her hearse if you had the money or the body.

Vengeance. It clouds your vision, drags you across the shoreline, sends you to the Crystarium. You seek out someone proper. Someone mad enough to hunt down a Virtue like Dikaiosyne, and someone who will stay. 

There are a few thousand sinners left out there. Only one will do. You pace yourself. You take your time. And when she comes, blindfolded and cast into her own darkness by her own choice, you finally take your shot.

**PART THREE.**

She is no ordinary woman, you’ve come to realize past the initial test. How she swings her broadsword is a technique you’ve let to fully learn or master. Different strokes for different folks, you would’ve been told. You take it in stride and remember how she keeps her footing when put up against these lessers. 

They’re no Virtue.

But you put together that she is the Warrior of Darkness. Had she gone under any other discipline, maybe you would have walked this path alone. But she’s chosen her battles, chosen her allies, chosen her enemies, chosen you. She doesn’t speak too often, but when she does, she’s short and brief. Coal, cold, crack. 

You trust her because you have to. You trust her because she asks no questions. 

But when she asks you what happened in Wright, you tell her. Because it’s the right thing to do. She deserves an explanation.

You ask the sinner if she’s with you until the end.

She nods, and you rub over your knuckles with your thumb because you can feel the light again.

You’re so fucking sick of the light.

**PART FOUR.**

Il Mheg is worse. Too bright. Too loud. Too much. You’re growing impatient, and you’re so close you can taste copper on your tongue. You can feel your blade cleave through. You can almost hear her whisper in your ear.

Almost.

Sul Oul is a wealth of information and wisdom. They’ve lived long before you, and will live long after you. But you’re tired of listening to tall tales and you’re tired of being regaled over how this Branden fellow was a hero once. A grand protector until his charge died.

It strikes you. Strikes the Warrior too as she relives it through some second sight you still can’t fully grasp yet. 

Not so different, you and her. Waging the same war but for different reasons. All in the love of the rage. From the start it’s been out of love, and the lines are beginning to blur between the sense of passion. Your fingers flex. You can feel her pulse. You can hear her in your ear. You can…

You ground yourself by reaching a hand up and rubbing over the scar. Quickly, now. Don’t make a show of it.

It’s time to get going, anyhow.

**PART FIVE.**

Branden smiles.

It feels like absolution. Judgment day. The bell cracks across the sky and you think you feel peace.

It’s what you assume peace to be. You can’t be sure. Peace to you was somewhere to sleep and something to eat. Peace to you was work to do and coin to gain. There has been no peace since Milinda. 

Will there ever be? That witch didn’t think so, not so long as you remain obsessed.

But now it’s done. The Warrior picks up the chunk of crystal left behind. Her head turns toward you, eyes still hidden, but her lips pull as if to ask.

You nod. You smile. Does it feel genuine? Does it taste right? You wonder how closely you mimicked Branden just then. 

The memory remains. But the edges are fraying. Passion shifts, ignites, shudders in the light. The light that is now the moon in the sky and the stars twinkling beside it. You know that she knows you know. A silent understanding.

And when you return to the Crystarium, when you prepare to part ways at Tessellation, when you tell her that you’ll meet again for the next hunt, whenever that is…

You kiss her.

It sets your heart on ice. 

And you return to your makeshift memorial to make peace with what haunts you.

You apologize. Your burden lifts. You love her. Gods, do you love her. 

But _who_ is it that you love now? 

**PART SIX.**

You meet with her after the starshower. Fortunate timing that you’d just come back from an adventure of your own, a trek that dragged you through the Greatwood and right back out to Lakeland again. You find her late at night. 

She tells you it’s alright now. She tells you that it’s okay. She tells you about her demons and what she must do. It’s her job as the Warrior of Darkness. You take the step forward, you prepare to insist, but she forces you to simmer.

You tell her she could stay. You tell her she could leave it all behind. 

She pulls off the blindfold.

You aren’t sure what you expected, and what you receive defies it. How tired she looks. How angry, how sad… She’s won this war, but there’s something else underneath it, too.

You touch her face. You feel her cold. You prepare to ask questions, and she tells you she has to leave. Not now. Not too soon. But eventually. 

As your heart starts to open again, you hammer nails and put up steel plates just to be safe. 

It doesn’t stop you from kissing her, or from spending the night.

**PART SEVEN.**

You see blood from the corner of her lips. White. You remember. You feel it on your hands. You ignore the pressure that’s building in your head and in your chest, and you simply fight.

You fight to protect. You fight to defend. You swallow the anger and it only starts a forge in your heart. 

Good. Use its power. Let it define you, but do not let it control you.

The thin blade of a samurai from a time long since passed swings down in a quick arc, and you raise your claymore to deflect it. You spare one glance at her, and though her blindfold is on, you know she can see you.

 _Go_ , you mouth to her. _Go and finish this proper._

So she does.

And you fight the good fight until you’re damn sure she’s won.

**PART EIGHT.**

The Crystarium is a racket. The Scions are leaving. The Exarch is gone. Something in you stirs. Some sort of emotion that draws you inward toward the crowd as they all try and offer their final goodbyes. They begin to disperse after what feels like an eternity. 

The Warrior stays because she sees you. The orange-haired girl, the one they call Ryne, the one that’s done her best to keep your Warrior afloat, lingers for a moment before she runs off up the steps to meet inside the Ocular. To prepare. 

You ask her if this is it.

She nods. 

The feeling of loss fills you suddenly, even though she’s tangible. Here. Breathing. You swore to move on, you swore to step past it all, but somehow you’re still grieving. 

She’ll be back, she tells you. She promises and touches your face. You’re the one who pulls off her blindfold to make sure she’s telling you the truth. The eyes never lie. 

You kiss her like you’re trying to break her, like you’re trying to bruise her, like you hate her. She understands your anger, because she returns it in her own stride. It feels endless. Molten embers, sparking spot fires, melting her ice. 

It’s soft on the breakaway. Apologetic, maybe. But you’ve made your point. 

_Best be back, sinner,_ you tell her. You’re counting on it.

The way she smiles is familiar, too familiar, and you can feel the night on your skin as she walks away.


	13. ache

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 13\. ACHE  
> (noun) - a continuous or prolonged dull pain in a part of one's body.
> 
> You fall in love with a man who calls you a sinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another attempt at looking inward, but this time from a slightly.. different perspective. I'd update tags to reflect it, but for now I'll keep them the way they are unless they pop back up again.
> 
> Also, it's been thirteen prompts in (two Sundays off) and the support I've received for my dumb little musings about these two is staggering and heartwarming. Thank you very, very much for following me on my journey of exploring Granson and Rax a little deeper, because they've brought me a lot of personal joy and I'm glad I can share it with people who like to read it. ♥

I.

It’s your turn now.

You know exactly what this means, Stella.

You know exactly what has brought this on.

You can never be rid of me, this ache in your chest. The old familiar pain. The hollow-point smile in your recycled soul.

So, now that you’re awake in the middle of the night, tell me about him.

II.

It makes more sense now.

You find in him a kindred soul. Someone who might be able to help the bleeding.

Not that you meant to act as his tourniquet. It happened that way. You’re a fixer-upper, or you’ve become one after being forced to for so long. And now...

You hold onto this stone that I’ve given you—that you’ve found—because it gives you purpose, even if you’re more familiar with the trigger. You could have made this quick and easy.

Instead, you fall in love with a man who calls you a sinner.

You like how sweet it sounds.

You like how true it is.

Finally, some more truth amidst all the shite you’ve put up with.

III.

He won’t give you the answers you’re looking for.

“Stella” is but a name for you, from me. A love letter, in a way. A reminder of what you were, what you can’t remember. A reminder of your anger. Your purpose.

Our purpose.

You keep him close because you feed off of each other. Vultures. Ravens, maybe, if I want to mark you smarter.

I know you hate it, Stella.

But I need you to hate it so you don’t fall in too deep.

IV.

They’re two sides of the same coin. I recognize I’m being selfish.

Love and hate. Passionate emotions, bursting at the seams. You can’t let go of any of it. 

And as you lie here awake, his arms around you, what is it that you yearn for?

What keeps you awake at night, Stella?

Surely it can’t be his breaths against your ear or how his fingers dig into your skin like an anchor.

No, it runs deeper than that. You look to me for guidance. You wait and listen.

Because you know I am here.

V.

And what else can I say, Stella?

What else can I say except that you were right all along?

You hold him tighter. You run your fingers over his scars on his hands. You feel his pulse at his wrist.

You remember what that blood rush is like. 

You commit that to memory.

And you make sure that when you listen for me again, you make sure his heart is in tune with yours. Ours. Listen. 

Listen, Stella.

_Listen._


	14. lucubration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 14\. LUCUBRATION  
> (noun) - study; meditation.
> 
> Granson takes it upon himself to intervene when Rax has forgotten to sleep.

“Wicked white, have you been up all night?”

“What?”

“I’ll take your confusion as a yes.”

The spaces in between, where the Warrior is able to return to the First, have been spent largely doing her own sense of study. There are a hundred questions left unanswered in these old journals, and getting away from the other Scions is half the battle. Being somewhere that she can breathe and think without being pestered about one task or another is important, even if she gets dragged every which way when she reappears in the Crystarium. 

So she’s forsaken her suite in the Pendants for one of the rooms in the lodges at Clearmelt. Rax advised the proprietor that she’ll gladly pay a rental fee if it means she can come by from time to time to stay and clear her head. Raucous laughter and a few hard smacks on the back let her know that there was no need, and that her actions for Lakeland and more specifically for all of Norvrandt are payment enough.

What wasn’t part of this agreement was the addition of another guest. Not too much of a stranger to these faces; Granson had done work for them before in the way of culling beasts that dared to get too close. He’s all right in their book, they told her, but next time, let them know.

Outside of the window, the sun can’t push its way through the drapes due to the fog. It’s early enough for Rax to question why he’s awake himself, and it’s late enough for Granson to think she absolutely hasn’t had a wink of sleep.

He’s right. She’s confused.

A hand drags down her face, trying to rub away the exhaustion. It doesn’t take away the dark circles; if anything it makes them show clearer, eclipsing the light in her eyes. The pen loosens from between her fingers and she sinks back in the chair, listening for his footsteps as they approach.

“You don’t have to cram every waking moment of every day doing this.”

“I haven’t had the opportunity in years.”

“But you had the opportunity to kill the bastards who did it, didn’t you?”

Three Temple Knights. Three Brotherhood rings. A hand raises to touch at the necklace that she’s made out of them. A set of twins returning from the bar, drunk off their asses, and a veteran who was going home to his wife and children. Slain in the bleak midwinter, their bodies left as a reminder. It wasn’t so long ago that Rax had returned home to Ishgard to finish the job, to let her father’s soul rest, but she recognized then that it didn’t bring her peace. 

There is no peace until there are answers, and there are no answers until there is peace.

“Look at me. C’mon. Look.”

Granson wedges himself between the Warrior and the desk, forcing her to scoot back. She struggles keeping her head up amidst her exhaustion, and so he reaches forward to cup both cheeks in his hands. He may never adjust to how cold she is, and she can tell because he always runs his thumbs over her skin the exact same way every time. He looks at her like he might a painting he finds interesting. Like he might find something new if he keeps staring. 

He does. Sort of. 

Rax’s eyes reflect disappointment when he gets past the sleeplessness. Wade a little further and he finds anger. With them, it’s always anger. Rarely toward each other, usually toward the world and their own emotions and how difficult it is to cope. This is the forefront it all, however: her confusion, her lack of self, and how impossible it seems to go forward.

“Study all you want, but you must know that there is a breaking point.”

“Whatever it may be, I haven’t reached it—”

“The point is _not_ to reach it, Rax. Brute force has gotten you how far now?”

She scoffs. He isn’t overly smug in his attitude, but there is some sort of swell of pride that he has in making her yield. Arguments like this would usually run around in circles, but with how tired she is, there’s no rebuttal. Just stewing frustrations, which he elects to solve by reaching and picking her right up from the chair.

“Granson. Granson—”

“Ah, ah! No complaining. You’ve had enough.”

There’s not quite gentleness in the way that he tosses her onto the bed. Rax rolls once, twice, and then from her side onto her back. Her arms jut out to either side of her as if she’s prepared to make angels out of the linens, and she groans as she stares at the ceiling. The fog outside begins to clear, slowly but steadily, and it makes light glitter across the breadth of his back. It shields her face from it, but only temporarily as he slips in beside her, yanking sheets over.

Begrudgingly, mismatched eyes follow his movements. It’s easy enough for him to pull her against his frame, arms snaked around her waist and his head dipping to press his lips to the top of the scar of light that slices down her back. It aches in protest, and he shivers in turn.

“If this is your way of telling me to take the day off…”

“Not telling you to. Telling you that you are.”

Frigid hands finally make way to find scarred ones. Her fingers trace over the ones she remembers before she laces between, and she lets out a quiet huff as her eyes close. Mercy for the unworthy, she thinks. There’s still so much work to be done. His nose nudges against her shoulder and a rumbled hum from his throat vibrates against her skin.

It’s difficult to stay frustrated when they’re tangled between. Rax sighs, low and soft, and her ears flatten against her head when he settles down. Sleep already threatens to take her, holding her hostage in its warmth, but she stays a little longer. Her fingers move to his wrist. Feel his pulse. Listen.

“...Don’t wake me up too soon.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

Heartbeats quicken. He pulls her closer. She drifts, and the blood rush is all that’s left between them aside from slow, steady, even breaths. It keeps an even tune. Proper. Near perfect synchronization.

Oh, home sweet home.


	15. fade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 15\. FADE  
> !! Violence/gore warning.  
> (verb) - gradually grow faint and disappear.
> 
> Light will always fade away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another dream sequence, whoops, but something darker this time to contrast the feel-goods from yesterday.  
> Trigger warning for rather blunt descriptions of violence. It's not blatant and extreme through the whole thing but it's enough to make mention.

_The sands of time are never kind. Not after this long, not after all that they had been through._

_Rasping breaths fill the air between. White. It’s all white. Vision. Blood. Chest. Heart. Tearing open. Seeing the sky. Failing a mission. Nothing but white._

_Not again, he’s told himself. Not again. Not another godsdamned eater, not after a second chance…_

_He can’t feel the tears that brim in his eyes and spill over his face. Her cold, fierce as it is, thrashes around her alongside the light. Its connection to her aether is turning near everything into frost around them. The sands he’s holding her upon, the shoreline air, the ocean froth._

_“Stay with me, Rax. Stay with me…!”_

_But his pleas fall on deaf ears. The crackle and shudder of her whole body in his grip is violent. Her mind is already beginning to shift away, into the hollow void of nothingness. A halo squeezes its way around her neck, searing into her skin and beginning to stain it white._

_“Sor… sorr…”_

_But she can’t get the word out. Clawed fingers reach up, desperately trying to hold onto something despite her vision caving in on itself. It’s like looking through broken glass. Teal fades into crimson, fades into grays and blues and…_

_“Don’t go. Fight it. You can fight this. If anyone can fight this—”_

_“No.”_

_It’s a final breath, a death rattle. But her form cannot hold. It cannot stay. She’s quivering, trembling, even as his fingers go blue and the tears freeze before they can drip down his face. His hands are shaking, part in understanding, part in resolve, part in sorrow, part in fury. They grip the handle of her broadsword, dragging it across the snowy sands, closer, closer…_

_A horrifying, warped screech emits from a slackened jaw. Mismatched eyes roll back ivory, and her ears crumble. Her whole frame turns to quartz in his touch, but not before she can dig those claws into his face, dragging sharp marks across and then—_

_He bashes her face with the pommel._

_Again. Again. Again. Again._

_The frame he no longer recognizes convulses and gurgles. Nothing comes out of her save for the flurried breaths and the retching, but she’s holding on, desperately trying to fight it. The blood she’s drawn off of him slushes, too cold to fall. He grits his teeth, he shakes his head and he squeezes his eyes shut as he brings it down with both hands—_

_Shatter._

_She can’t hold any longer. Not she, it — a beast, a holy thing, an angel without purpose, something forgiven by something unseen and it sure as hell isn't by him._

_What was left of her scatters to the wind. Particles of light flutter and fade past him, but with her expulsion comes a chill he can’t deny. He’s frozen in place, trembling uncontrollably, feeling the life she had given him, the secondary lease he didn’t feel as though he truly deserved, drain from him with every trialed exhale. The pressure builds rapidly, too much and too fast._

_The blizzard howls on the shores of Kholusia where she took her last breath._

_It claims him, too, ice crawling over his form and immortalizing the final bastion. Head lowered, staring at his hands, wondering where he had gone wrong and what he could have done to avoid it this time, this time—_

Granson screams.

He screams when he wakes and as he tosses and tumbles in the sheets, throwing them off of him despite the sweat that forces them to stick.

Rax isn’t here. Not by choice, more by obligation, and he can’t come down from the racing pulse that’s throttling his entire core.

These nightmares are more frequent these days. The longer she stays away, the longer he’s committed her light scars to memory, the more often he dreams of her turning and pleading with her eyes, just like… Just like—

No. Breathe. He gasps and buries his face into his hands, slicking greyed strands dampened with sweat away and trying his damndest not to see her in the light.

He doesn’t, for a mercy.

But he feels her hands on his skin, searing like an eternal fire, and for a moment he dares to drop his fingers lower…

Granson feels blood as it smears from his cheek. The ache suddenly surfaces, rolling in waves, and he stares into the empty space in the bed.

Back soon, she’d told him. Back soon…

He drags himself from the bed and carries himself to the desk, where he sits and situates and steeps in the memories. Stark contrast, too vivid against the crimson he’s inspecting on his fingers. How it blossoms. How it stains. How it’s warm and how he’s _too_ warm, even with only smallclothes on—

Scarlet eyes close and he reaches his bloodied hand out. For what? For some sort of sign? An answer?

A cold wind blows through, and he exhales for what feels like the first time since waking.

Not a fade, but a flare. Not an end, but a beginning…

He presses his lips to the blood, and he lets his eyes close one more time for the night.


	16. panglossian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 16\. PANGLOSSIAN  
> (adjective) - marked by the view that all is for the best in this best of possible worlds; excessively optimistic.
> 
> Kieran has two goals on this vacation: make new friends and float like a boat on the sea.

Kholusia has become such a far cry from reality that returning to it often feels like some sort of fever dream. Granson hasn’t had business in Wright in years, not since him and his wife had felled Dikaiosyne and not since she had brought proper darkness back to all of Norvrandt. But the gentle shores of Lakeland weren’t quite a proper vacation, and inevitable wanderlust had to set in at some point.

“Come on. Don’t get too far behind, Kieran.”

When his name rings, purple eyes widen with abashed excitement. But so do the ears atop of his head, pinging upward. The boy rushes quickly forward toward his father, who hears the rapid pattering of footsteps against the sand, and he has to be even faster to bend down and pick him up before he makes a crash course against him.

Not too far behind, Rax takes a few long strides forward with a wry smile touching her lips. Worn fingertips adjust the scarf swirled around her neck and she shifts the bag slung over her back, filled with excess for the day. 

“Da! I wanna splash! And the birds, I wanna play! Come on, come on!”

The excited cheers of the teal-haired boy in his arms makes it a little difficult for Granson to properly carry him over toward the beach. It’s Kieran’s first foray into somewhere that isn’t the endless purples of Lakeland, and at first, both of them were nervous about it. He had always been happy-go-lucky from the start, but the differences between the island and the mainland were vast and they feared that the separation of locales would be too much, too quickly.

Kieran, however, is flailing his arms excitedly in front of him as he’s brought over. Carefully set down, he’s vibrating with joy as he makes a quick dash to chase after birds that have made their perch on nearby rocks. Instinctively, Rax steps forward and prepares to bolt after him in the event that he trips and falls and breaks something. Granson loops an arm around her waist instead.

“Let him go. He’s not at his top speeds yet. _Then_ you can start worrying.”

She rolls her eyes, but a faint smile touches her lips anyway as she loosens the strap of her bag and lets it fall to the sands at their feet. Not for a moment do her eyes pull away from her son, who is reaching out and giving a particularly grumpy looking bird with faded azure plumage some pets on its beak.

“I think he likes me! Do you like me? Uh-huh…”

Kieran makes friends. Imaginary or not, he’s thrilled to make the attempt. He’s even bold enough to reach and shake its talons with his hand, bursting into a rapture of giggles when the bird actually lets him. Seeing glitters in the water immediately turns his attention and he practically glides across the sands to wander in, stomping his feet as he goes.

“Kieran!” Rax calls from her spot, doing her _best_ not to sound angry. But it’s the concern in her, the old font of anger, the cracked soul crystal that almost makes her slip. “Be mindful of the fish!”

It’s less in defiance of his mother and more in his bountiful optimism that the boy kneels down in the water, hugging his knees for a moment. The water reflects in those big eyes of his, and he watches as the small fish wiggle around in confusion at this giant who has entered their domain. His ears lower slowly, his focus intensifying tenfold, and he moves a hand down. Scooping some of the fish up, he keeps them underwater and observes as they ping-pong against his skin. He grins wildly and sways in place.

“They’re dancing, Ma! Back and forth and back and forth…”

Granson arches a brow and gently tugs at her waist, pulling her along toward the shore to investigate. Not long after are they all together again, the three kneeling in the water and observing casually as the fish take to their new giant friend. 

“Don’t squish ‘em, Ki. Let ‘em go.”

Kieran sighs, a bit dejected, but he does as he’s asked. His hand loosens and the fish shimmy away. He stands right back up and begins to wade further into the water, which sets his mother on ice. His father feels it right away and side-eyes her before realization of what’s going on hits him.

The boy’s far enough out to float now, and he does successfully with some additional paddling. But then he flips and he’s on his back, doing his best to stay atop the water.

He dips. 

Rax’s body jerks forward in immediate reaction, keenly aware that her son does _not_ have the Kojin’s blessing, although she wonders if Bismarck’s help would have reached the very top of the ocean, but if it didn’t then it would be an absolute nightmare, fishing him out from just below the surface—

“Warm up, sinner. He’s got it!”

She blinks and frees herself from her fears, standing up entirely to watch. Both of his arms are jutted out to either side of him, and he’s grinning as wide as he can as the current gently guides him back and forth. Floating along aimlessly, staring at the sky (and avoiding the sun, as he’s been taught), the simplest of enjoyments. 

A breath releases, one she wasn’t aware she was holding, and as Granson rises she leans into him. 

“You’ve ought to put more faith in him, you know,” he tells her, leaning to press his lips to the fringe atop her head as her ears lower. “Cynic at heart, but he hasn’t changed your mind at all after everything he’s done.”

“I… worry. I know,” she huffs under her breath before her hand slips into his and tugs him along. Into the waters, wading, floating, and then lingering along beside Kieran who’s been sporadically laughing the entire time. A brand new kind of thrill.

“Float with me! Ma, Da, float! Like a boat!”

They look at each other while their son lifts his head to watch them with glittering excitement, nodding vigorously and being mindful of his ears as he does so. The couple shrug and shift, and then they’re all on their backs. Floating along. Allowing the current to drift with Kieran in between. He takes their hands into his own, holding on tight and acting like they’re his anchors — as they are in everything he does.

And they float along, as the sun drags its way down the sky, as Eulmore sets alight in the distance, as a reminder of peace soothes over their minds.

“It’s the little things,” Rax ends up saying after a while, opening her eyes to regard the sky as its paint bleeds pink, purple, orange. 

“Literally, figuratively...” Granson offers an errant chuckle, and then a squeeze to Kieran’s hand. “The little things.”

Kieran merely beams, growing sleepy as he’s rocked back and forth, as his parents recognize that and begin to lead him along. Away from the ocean, to the sands, where they dry off and begin to make way back to the village to rest for the night. Rax carries him this time and his head rests against her shoulder, big purple eyes now lidded, slowly blinking every time that the waves crash.

“Little things…”


	17. where the heart is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 17\. WHERE THE HEART IS  
> Rax brings back gifts of alcohol from what she may have once considered her home.

“Never was a wine person.”

“I never took you for one, either. Ale?”

“More or less. Why do you ask?”

“I thought we’d settle in with a drink or two. It’s late enough, isn’t it?”

“...I’ve never seen these bottles before. Where did you get them?”

“Home.”

The pair exchange glances for a moment before the Warrior makes a move to open both bottles. One, of a particular Coerthan ale, and the second of Gridanian wine. She passes the former to him and keeps a hold on the latter, tipping the bottle back against her lips rather than pouring herself a glass. Tastes better that way, she might argue. 

A swish of his bottle and the mourner takes a steady sip, not wanting to go too quickly. He's far from a lightweight, but the night is early and he isn't so sure what else she may have in store.

“So… home. You’ve never said anything about it.”

“Not much to say.”

“Bite me. There’s always something. You saw Wright, you saw Lakeland, the rest of Norvrandt. You can tell me a thing or two, sinner.”

Rax sinks in her seat, balancing the bottle on her thigh as her lips purse into a hard line. Where to begin? And where would she end? Her mind swims through faded memories, bogged down by blood and death and so much sadness that it almost doesn’t feel fair to harbor them. But she must, because she said she would… Because where else would they go?

“The Source is massive. The Flood cut off Norvrandt to a point, but that never happened back home. There’s a lot of life from edge to edge. Different cultures. Where I grew up, it was a land reduced to eternal winter from a calamity and razed from a thousand-year war.”

“War? Against who?”

“Dragonkind.”

“Can’t imagine what they all could have done to piss dragons off.”

“I helped end it. But Ishgard… Ishgard never really... “

She stares into her bottle and forces herself to take another swig. The flat strength of it helps burn the memories, all so they’re easier to speak about. He plays patient, resting back in his chair after putting his vice down on the table to let the froth settle.

“It never felt like home.”

“I’m guessing you’re getting to explaining that.”

“It’s the home to elves. Mostly, anyway. There are humes and other races spotted throughout. I was an outsider compared to their puritanical state, and going out when I was a kid meant danger.”

“Puritanical. Religious, too?”

“The Holy See. Pledging their allegiances to Halone, the Fury. Goddess of war, mover of glaciers.” 

“Recipe for disaster. War goddess.”

“It suited them fine until I had to kill the leader of the church.”

Granson does a double-take, careful not to choke on what he’s in the process of swallowing. Killing wasn’t off the table for either of them and they’d both done their fair share of it. That much he knew from observing how she fought rather than asking. But she’s never gone in-depth about what she’s done, and what sort of blood she had on her hands.

In turn, she shrugs, like it’s the normal thing to do.

“Corrupt. Ascian-guided. He turned into a beast, and so did his men. I did what I had to do.”

“What happened after that?”

“The beginning of… rebuilding. And a harder step forward in stopping the war.”

“Wasn’t immediate?”

“There was a lot to do. A lot to gain… a lot to lose…”

“So this was when your father died.”

Rax seizes up in her seat. It’s not Granson’s intention to rip open old wounds, but he’s eager for a clearer picture. He watches as she takes a long, long pull of her wine and as she straightens up. His lips part, prepared to tell her that she doesn’t have to go into depth about it, that the mere acknowledgement of the event is all that he’s looking for, but she continues before he can speak.

“Killed. Burnt to a crisp alongside all of his work. A lot of things after that are a blur. I remember his funeral after the war was won, and then… Just… More fighting. More loss. I went through the motions, but I can’t…”

“You got your revenge.”

“...Eventually. It took me a while to be able to piece together the culprits. But I did.”

“It wasn’t enough, was it?”

“No.”

“Because there’s still more you’re after.”

“I won’t find any of it here. And I doubt I’ll find any of it there. You’re right. Nowhere _feels_ right anymore. I could go anywhere and be judged for what I am, who I am… I could go anywhere and be praised for what I’ve done. But I’d never be able to settle.”

The mourner polishes off the bottle that he’s been given and he nudges it to the side on the table before leaning forward, forearms resting against the wood. His fingers lace together and he lifts his gaze, clearing his throat, thinking of the words to say. A sense of belonging has escaped him since Milinda, and there’s little else that he’s here for beyond that. His purpose is long since spent, but there’s always a need for a swordhand somewhere.

Beyond that, there’s the feeling that remains beyond the veil. Blossomed passion, burning cold. It’s why they’re there, it’s why they meet up like this, it’s unspoken but presented physically without mercy. There is perhaps a shred of remorse, a shred of guilt under the surface, and there is an ache that pulls at him with each touch in between.

Things have changed. Time moves on. His hands loosen from each other and one reaches across the way to find her own, once it rests against the tabletop.

“So follow where your heart takes you. Home is where you make it.”

“If I could follow, I would never leave here.”

“You’ll get the chance. Make the call. Cut off the line and find somewhere to wind down. Marry, have a kid or two.”

“Are you projecting onto me?”

“Maybe. Or maybe I’m a mind reader. Point is that you’ve got time. It doesn’t have to happen all at once, sinner.”

A lift of her hand and a lean forward cause his lips to catch contact against chilled fingers. Her lips are pulled into a frown as she considers his words loosely, feeling them burn a hole through her heart. Her head lowers and she steals a glance at the wine bottle before setting it down with a thunk.

“I’ll figure it out some day.”

“Sooner rather than later. Before what you do kills you. That’s my preference speaking.”

“We’ll see what kills me first.”

“What, the alcohol or your enemies?”

“Or anything else in between.”

“I’d wager peaceful old age.”

“I’d choose a bullet if I had to.”

“Quick and easy?”

“The path of least resistance.”

“Let’s not get too morbid. You’ve got a lot of life ahead of you.”

“All theoreticals when alcohol becomes involved, Granson.”

“And alcohol can transform those theoreticals into very vibrant possibilities, Rax.”

“I could _theoretically_ take you to bed before you say something else obscene.”

“And I could make that possible. Mind your footing so you don’t trip on the way up.”

Tugging on her arm, Granson draws the Warrior to her feet and makes a swift movement to meet with her around the table. She’s scoffing quietly, playfully at him as he pulls her along, offering that half-smirk of his along the way, kissing over her knuckles again before they both tumble into bed. 

“The lights are on.”

“Turn em’ off in the morning.”

“Not afraid of the dark, are you?”

“Not since you brought it back.”

“Implies you were, once upon a time.”

“All theoretical, love. All theoretical.”


	18. foibles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 18\. FOIBLES  
> (noun) - a minor weakness or eccentricity in someone's character.
> 
> She has always safeguarded herself. He pleads for her to let him in.

Glacial walls. Silence. Deafening, piercing silence that casts the deepest shadow. Deeper than what lies in the soul, deeper than what they know, deeper than what they’ve seen. Strike a match and the light gets consumed. Frustrations build and spill over.

“You need to talk to me.”

Lightning cracks. Ricochet. A sharp demand in the contrast of the dull backdrop. Tension breathes slow, coiling around and tightening. Colder now. Colder still. Don’t press too much luck.

“You need to let me in.”

Flickering flames. Whistling steam. Heightening pressure. It builds, and builds, and builds until there’s bound to be an explosion. It doesn’t taste like the same kind of fury that they’re used to. It’s less spicy and more bitter, almost alkaline if not for the new feeling it brings. 

“You have to start trusting me.”

Down to earth. Steady now. Breathe it in. Maintain that sense of peace and don’t let it go. It’s a guiding force in the afterglow, skin touching skin and desperately trying to pry it open just for a look. See what makes the plates shift. 

“We’ve come this far…”

Soothing waters. Wash away the inevitable ache. The aftermath brings tingles down the spine. Desire swims in reflective eyes, searching for reciprocation. Message received. The tide pushes back and forth but they’re not done yet.

“...and wicked white, _I love you_. Let me in.”

Whispering winds. It carries across the sea, brushes against arctic peaks of skin and bone, cradles itself along the curve of lips that dare to part, to return, to breathe life into what’s demanded. They pick up. They howl. They cry out for the truth.

The truth melds it all together when they meet. The dark suffuses and drags them down like an anchor; the light supernovas and soars them higher. A cycle, again and again and again, of broken hearts mending in the wake of loss. Of anger. Of love.

They part when there is nothing left to feel but the newborn, fleeting hope. Dewy on their cheeks, damp on their lips, fresh in their hearts. 

“Come in.”


	19. argy-bargy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 19\. ARGY-BARGY  
> (noun) - noisy quarreling or wrangling.
> 
> The sound defines them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haikus because I was running short on time and wanted to give it a shot~

Gunshot or fist fight  
Diehard impact, the last night  
Bed frame breaking light

Louder still they come  
Together, sin and sentence  
The sound defines them

Afterglow heartbeat  
Start a raging symphony  
Loss eclipsed by love

Now rediscovered  
But off-tune, off-key, displaced  
Sinner becomes saint

She's a holy hymn  
Savior at the end of days  
But he knows her dark

And the dark is not  
without consequence, for it  
will scream in yearning

Sing beyond the pale  
Leave if you must; remember  
“I will guide you back.”


	20. shuffle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 20\. SHUFFLE  
> (verb) - rearrange (a deck of cards) by sliding the cards over each other quickly.
> 
> Rax temporarily lays the dark to rest. Granson is told of his fate in the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a disclaimer that I used actual inspiration from tarot on these. Loosely comparing the major arcana to the arcana we have in FF14, and running with it. :))

It’s not always the depths of the dark. There are other disciplines that the Warrior dabbles in, and perhaps it’s for the best that she eases away from the abyss for a while. It tends to cloud her vision and fill her head with the macabre, steeping her in the anger that birthed her. Breaking free of its clutches is self-care. Fray may have had some choice words for it, but his presence is always there nonetheless, and she can see his shade in between her fingertips at times.

But breaks like these allow for her to try new things. To have a little fun with what she’s learned. As she sits herself at the table, armed with a deck of cards and a planisphere that floats by her shoulder, Granson has to question what her intentions are.

“You’ve been busy,” he notes, slowly lowering the blade he’s using to sharpen the roughened edges of his claymore.

“All of this is what I committed to before becoming the Warrior of Darkness. Stars heed my call, all of that. They gave me a sense of peace where I couldn’t find it anywhere else.”

Rax’s father had dabbled in astrology rather briefly before his death, listening to the words of Jannequinard and attempting to put the science together. As he studied, the young Viera caught on rather quickly and did her best to remember the different arcana as they were presented to her. She had picked up the concept again when her journeys returned her to Ishgard, and she spiraled into their truths once he had passed.

It only felt right.

Dragging up a seat, worn fingertips begin to sift through the cards in her hands. They harbor matte black backings with glittering symbolism of the sun and the moon, dazzled with stars in between. She shuffles them casually, mixing them once, twice, three times before splaying them out in a line on the table in front of her. Content with her show, she reclines in her seat and raises her eyes expectantly to her partner.

“Pick.”

Granson’s never heard of things like this. Stars were hardly something to be understood in a land of ephemeral light, but since it had been expunged, there’s been talk about the night sky and how it functions. He understood it all at a basic level, but held decency so as to not inquire why this was what she wanted to do to begin with.

Surely it’s important. Therefore he won’t ask, and he’ll play along instead.

Scarred fingers hover over the cards. The artwork on the back creates an illusion of there being more than there is on the table, and so his pointer rests on the second to last one. A nod and he withdraws the card as she scoops the remainder up and shuffles them again, once more splaying them out. 

“Again.”

An eyebrow slowly raises but the mourner complies nonetheless. This time, it’s the third from the last. Once more, he takes it and flips it over. And for the final time, there’s another mixing and switching before they’re laid out. Two gone. Four remain. He picks the first in line and she pushes the remainder aside while drawing her astrolabe closer.

Cards dance around the outside of the relic while metal connects in loops. It dances and rotates on its own axis, a metal star shimmering on the inside. A small azure orb, representative of a planet (perhaps Hydaelyn itself, symbolic as it is) orbits around the piece. Rax’s hand moves to push it higher up so it hovers over the table, and Granson suddenly leans forward. He’s half-laden with interest, curiosity, smoldering eyes shifting from the conduit to the chosen cards on the table.

“...What’s all this about?”

“The cards pull energy from the heavens. We use the cards to read people, to follow paths, to… try and predict the future. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.”

“Sounds like a fairytale.”

“Let’s see.”

Rax felt the same way he did once. Nonsense in the form of supposed astral magic, drawing power from planes unknown. But now she _knows_ , and her mind’s been unlocked to the different gates. Attuned. Familiarized. Her eyes carefully tread over the cards in question, and a hand moves to cup her chin in thought.

“Spire. Arrow. Bole. These are in the order you drew them?”

“Just so.”

Granson’s curiosity draws him to watch her more than it is to observe the cards. They’re nothing too out of the ordinary, but he’s never seen her this keen on something that isn’t… the usual. She’s different in a way a prism catches light. The same, but move the angle a bit and there’s something new to discover. It fascinates him, and though he _still_ doesn’t understand the point of all of this, he’s content to lean in a little further and listen to what his partner has to say.

“The Spire represents devastation. Incredible change. Disaster. Bad things in your life, sudden calamities that changed your entire routine. Based off of what you’ve chosen, I’d say this represents losing Milinda.”

He stiffens in his seat. It isn’t often they speak of her. Not since things had changed between them. He clears his throat, giving the artwork on the card a hardened stare as if it would change. It doesn’t. The tower upon it stands mightily, although it could crumble at any moment with the storm behind it.

“The Arrow represents forward movement. Acceleration in life. Willpower to continue, and determination. A recovery period. You made yours in the name of revenge, and that’s where you found me.”

Mismatched eyes lift to gauge his reaction. The shift of emotions is clear as ever on his face. From fleeting sadness to fond reflection, it’s a shift of light she enjoys. The corners of her lips quirk into a semblance of a smile, and he folds his arms as he sits back comfortably. Somewhere in his eyes, anxiety sparks; the last card is on his mind, and what it could possibly hold. At this point, he doesn’t have a clue and he couldn’t even begin to guess.

“The Bole represents a completed cycle. A journey’s end. You could see it as a mission completed. A job well done. You did what you came to do, and now…”

“Now?”

Granson speaks with quickness that catches even him off-guard. Rax’s brows arch, and her hand raises to pull the planisphere down from its twinkling position above them. It remains hovering for a time as she eyes the cards, loosely considering.

“I shuffled the cards repeatedly. You chose them, and you read your own story. There was no trickery. Just fate.”

“And what about the future?”

With a click, the relic collapses and lands simply into her hand. The other makes work of gathering up the cards as they’re spread on the table, tucking them back into a neat pile.

“I could read your future. But then there would be no mystery. No surprise. It’s more fun for me to keep you guessing.”

“And they call fate a cruel mistress…”

Laughter rings out in the room as Rax raises to her feet and makes her way around the table, stealing a kiss from him and stepping beyond to tuck both the weapon and the sleeve of cards away.

“If you think _I’m_ cruel, you haven’t seen anything yet.”


	21. beam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 21\. BEAM  
> (noun) - a ray or shaft of light.
> 
> You find you miss the horror of the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Companion piece of sorts to prompt 12, but in the perspective of Rax instead. ♥

**PART ONE.**

Everlasting light. You can’t remember the last time that you’ve seen it so bright, all at once. It reminds you of the stark whites of Coerthas when the weather is clear. Blinding to the unforgiving eye, and relentless in its swathe over you. 

Your fingertips reach out upward toward the skies as if you could whisk away the beams and make use of them for something good. But all the good they’re for is breeding more holiness, and you’re reminded of that when the snarl of a lover meets your ears.

You swing your broadsword, and the blade cleaves the figure in two.

You don’t let it preach because it’s a sermon you’ve heard too many times already.

**PART TWO.**

You can’t see the light, but you can feel it. This is what the people that have used you regard as their saving grace. And here, in the First, it’s nothing more than an infernal nuisance. What they want is the dark. So they reforge you into a blade of that namesake. They call you the shadowbringer. You’re not sure whether you find the name hilarious or insulting.

But you take a certain pleasure in expelling light from this world. One eater at a time. You twist the blade and sometimes, you need to remind yourself that these were people once, too. They were afraid. They had lives. Lives, loves, destinies, but the light choked them and swallowed them whole. They were reborn forgiven from their sins, and you have to remind _them_ that there is no such thing as a sinless life.

Besides, this is a mercy.

**PART THREE.**

Cardinal Virtues sound as formidable as they supposedly are. You’re so numb to the prospect of a challenging enemy that when you’re told to take up the offer of one of these hunters, you don’t think too much. But you see the blazing aether of this man, how it swirls red and dark and how deeply it contrasts to the light that you’ve tried to spin between your fingertips.

He says his name is Granson, and he says that he’s hunting down the Virtue named Dikaiosyne. He regards the target as more of a fiend, a beast, a creature than a man or anything symbolizing one. You can taste his vitriol and it’s somewhere between the spice of cinnamon and the heavy haze of smoke. 

It’s enough to commit you, even though you’re sure he knows about who and what you are.

**PART FOUR.**

Everything blurs together. All of your days hardly feel as if they’re real. They started feeling more like bittersweet fantasy after you’d killed Philia, after you’d absorbed its light. Where you were a weapon before, you are now a sponge, made to fix the mistakes of those who came before you.

Your partner grounds you with his story of love and loss. Milinda, how he had laid her low. A parallel ache. It reminds you of why you’re where you are, even as you kill more strays and as you deepen the stains on your soul. He calls you sinner out of necessity for a nickname, but now it’s more personal. He’s seen what you’re capable of. He knows. And it’s his title for you and the devil’s work that you do. 

You like how it sounds off his tongue, and how it makes his crimson simmer a little lower against the dark backdrop of your empty vision.

**PART FIVE.**

The light is threatening to burst at the seams as you fight alongside him.

Dikaiosyne towers over you, an immovable obelisk that dashes across the flowery fields quicker than you can follow. 

The weight of the Lightwardens is heavy inside your chest. The usual perpetual darkness that you suspend yourself within with your blindfold is interrupted. It’s like cracking glass and it runs split across both eyes. You’re so close to shattering, and it’s a struggle merely keeping it all together.

Granson’s carrying all of his weight. He gained your counsel for the fight, but he hadn’t anticipated _this_. You’ve been so strong all the way up until the moment he needs you, and for what?

A growl rips from your throat, something guttural and bestial and familiar in the way that it parallels the Virtue that you’re charging at. You swing like a woman possessed, and you knock him to the ground before you raise your weapon. You can’t see its aether. All you can see is the vaguely familiar face of a man that you had consulted once in a memory that was not your own.

Branden.

You mouth the word ‘sorry’ as you bring it down like a gavel of broken justice, and you can only hear your heart hammer against your chest. You can only hear the blood rush in your ears. You can’t hear Granson calling out for you as white viscera sputters from your lips. You can’t turn your head in time before you collapse to your knees, heaving, trying to keep it together.  


Is this what absolution feels like?

**PART SIX.**

You don’t remember the last time that you’ve had a good night’s sleep. Now is not one of those nights, and there may never be another one again. You’ve done what you came here to do, you’ve suspended everything in darkness as you were told to do, and now you’re a weapon without a purpose.

But at least you have a physical reminder of what you are: expendable. The scar that rips down your back and reflects your spine is enough of a tell.

You ignore the searing ache. You try and pretend it doesn’t paralyze you. The entire room is in near sub-zero temperatures from the discomfort that you’re in, trying to recover from your near transformation. To your feet you go and you shove open the window in your suite.

There is no light to behold. Nothing to reach out for. Only twinkling dark.

You find you miss the horror of the light.

A knock on the door breaks concentration and he lets himself in before you can say anything. 

Your spinal cord glows gently and provides the only opposition in the room. His breath fogs and he fights the chill with his arms around his body, but they’re quick to ease around you instead.

It reminds you of your initial namesake, Warrior of Light. It brings warmth to your chest that you thought you lost.

But your tears crystallize before they can touch the ground.

**PART SEVEN.**

Granson kisses along the beams that come from your scar. He doesn’t stay for long because of the cold, but it helps the ache in a way you can’t explain.

You’ve damn near begged him to stay as you recover. He has nowhere else to go, save for Wright. But it’s something he can put off for a little while longer, he tells you. As long as you’re here, it’s time better spent.

You wonder what it tastes like. Purity? Sin? Bitter? Sweet? Nothing at all? You don’t have the heart to ask.

And maybe he doesn’t care to tell. Maybe he prefers snuffing out the light he’s grown to hate. Maybe he’s trying to learn to love it as it adorns you.

**PART EIGHT.**

You turn your back to him with nothing left on your lips, save for the smoke and the cinnamon. 

Sweeter now after the bruising feeling. The anger of letting go. The fear of the unknown. 

Your smile sticks and he watches you as you raise your hand up to the sky, as you swindle rays of light around your fingers, as they dance along the snowflakes that crest on your gloves.

One last feeling before you leave.

One last glance over your shoulder.

He’s one step ahead of the other. He wants to follow you. 

And your smile deepens, all because you know he can’t. All because you know he’s stuck here with this new kind of light.

Maybe he’s learned to love it like he’s learned to love you.


	22. wish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 22\. WISH  
> (noun) - a desire or hope for something to happen.
> 
> Granson tells Rax about a falling star from his youth.

“I’d wager the starshower roused something up in me.”

Granson speaks with such conviction that Rax has to take pause in what she’s doing. How his brow knits as he focuses his gaze ahead on nothing at all, just so he could maintain some sort of balance. His arms instinctively flex against his chest as they fold and he wonders if it’s worth explaining.

“Such as?” 

“Tall buildings. Incredible skyline. Nothing much more than that, but I did remember something that happened when I was younger.”

The Warrior’s heart clenches in her chest, and the blood rush is so loud that she almost doesn’t pick up on the latter half of his statement. Amaurot detailed from the point of view of others outside the unsundered leaves something to be desired. She wishes she could hear more, understand what it was like, but being shattered like that destroys everything in between.

She recovers and eyes him curiously.

“What’s that?”

Granson takes his time to consider the tale. He was never the best storyteller, but he figures if he spins it right enough it’ll sound convincing. He’s never one to lie or cut corners, not without a purpose, and he doesn’t lie to her. Never her.

“Falling stars weren’t really heard of when I was a child. But sometimes you’d see streaks of light in the sky that were unexplainable. Beyond what the light already was. Not like any of us understood how it worked, and far be it from us to try and figure out how the Flood messed with the flow of things.”

Curiosity stirs further. Rax’s fingertips drum against her arm in idle consideration. Granson refocuses his gaze on her, noting the potential impatience, and he continues.

“When something fell from the sky, we all thought it was real armageddon. A bad omen. End of days finally catching up. But this fell too close to home, and it felt like a warning shot. I was the one who saw what fell.”

“The chances of that happening seem incredibly low,” she quips, but she’s fully invested in what he’s regaling her with. “That’s not such a bad omen after all, is it?”

“It was what we all thought. And the crater it left behind… The meteor wasn’t even that large, but it was both burning and freezing. Glowing with an unholy light, nothing like the sky. Getting anywhere near it felt impossible but if there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Granson’s hand shifts out from its folded position, and his fingers flex as he inspects them. Though they’re largely faded now, the burn marks and small scars from meteor shrapnel scatter across them. The Warrior cocks her head, choosing silence as her alternative despite the interested glint in mismatched eyes.

“I must’ve only been twelve, thirteen summers. I reached out for it and touched it.”

A scoff pulls from Rax’s lips. The sound surprises the storyteller who narrows his gaze at her from across the way. She leans back in her seat and shakes her head.

“Did you make a wish on it?”

“...Make a wish?”

“That’s what people would do at home when they’d see falling stars in the sky. Make a wish, maybe it’ll come true. I’ve never heard of one falling right beside you, so maybe the rules are different.”

“I doubt any wish I could have made would have come true. Too much misfortune, too much hunger, too much pain in the years to come after that.”

Now she hums. A low, vibrating sound — like a bird in the fleeting sun. She sinks into her considerations and rises beyond the surface with another errant thought.

“What would you wish for now if you had the chance?”

He has to take pause. Different things pop into his mind with quickness but none of them sound right. For such a theoretically rare occasion, the wish has to be good — it’s a condition he makes up in his head. Then he decides, and a dry chuckle leaves him.

“I’d wish to settle down.”

Arctic features soften on the Warrior’s face as she regards him and the answer he’s given. It could mean a hundred things, but she decides to take a shot in the dark.

“Have a family? Live the good life?”

“Eventually. I meant it more in finding a place to stay, somewhere to set myself up for the future and whatever it brings. Don’t right know where I’d go.”

She pushes to her feet so she can meander closer to him, shifting so she leans back against him. He has little choice but to withdraw his arms and he’s content to loop them around her frame, chin nestling atop her head and between her ears. They brush against his cheeks and the frayed fur tickles him, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Her hands place over his and she nudges him with an elbow.

“What about Clearmelt?”

“What about it?”

“It’s a place to settle down. We could buy out one of the lodges, stay there…”

“We?”

Granson’s tone turns faintly playful as he feels her tense momentarily. She huffs a breath of cold air and tilts her head back, ebony fringe cutting her vision of him up. Her ears pin back as she stares, inspecting features, violet and azure gaze drinking in that faint outline of a smirk and yearning to tear it apart. In turn, he squeezes her and it draws her closer back against him.

“Relax, sinner. You’re too easy to fluster.”

“Is that a yes or a no to my idea?”

“It’s a thought. Far away enough in Lakeland to feel… sort of like new. I’m familiar with the area.”

“I’ll go with you to see.”

“Sounds to me like you’re making up every excuse to stay here a little longer.”

There’s another jab of her elbow against him, sharper this time. Granson’s laugh echoes in the room and his lips find a place on her forehead. She simmers down, her eyes closing although her lips are still pulled into a hard, thin line.

“On your mark then, sinner. We’ll see if we can make this late wish come true yet.”


	23. when pigs fly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 23\. WHEN PIGS FLY  
> An oath is made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter mostly because this prompt didn’t inspire me.. much at all. I’ll pick up the steam Monday, probably!

Somewhere, there was a silent oath of protection. A bond forged. Perhaps it was before a time like this — in a world now lost to time but resurfaced and remolded into memories. Fresh ones that stung. Old ones that ached.

But that was then, and this was now, and they held each other’s hands as they mourned the loss of a friend.

Wordless. Soundless. No tears. They had made a silent promise that with their duties done, they would see their lives through as blades for the less fortunate. Proper justice where only their brand would do.

When Hell freezes over, when pigs fly, when the blue moon rises — only then could they break what they’ve created.

She tells him that she’s seen all of those happen. It’s all real and nothing is impossible — not after what she’s seen, what she’s done.

Then he becomes bolder.

“Until the Warrior of Darkness falls.”

And despite the mantle laid upon her — oh, heavy is the crown that glitters in blood diamonds — she takes it in full stride.

For those they had lost, and for those they could yet save.


	24. irenic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 24\. IRENIC  
> (adjective) - aiming or aimed at peace.
> 
> She's at peace. The most peaceful he's ever seen her. And it breaks his blackened heart.

It’s a close call. Rapid heartbeats, ragged breaths, dented armor, slit fabric, worn-down blades. It’s done. The fight is won. Even if the blood that trickles from their wounds is fresh and flowing and fervent, their victory is something to be proud of.

The Warrior buckles down to one knee, piercing the tip of her faussar into the ground, damp with fluid. Her free hand clutches at her chest as she tries to catch up, unable to get past the wheezing and the gasping. It feels like she’s snapped a rib or two. It feels closer to her lung, hugging it rather than puncturing, for a mercy.

The mourner stumbles toward his partner. Dirt splays across his face alongside some fresh new cuts, blood smeared among the filth. There are red and black and white stains on his armored jacket, and the exhaustion in his eyes is visible through smoldering embers. Flickering in low light. Not entirely snuffed out, not yet. There was still a fight left to fight.

She gathers herself and a shaky hand raises, fingers fumbling before they pull off the cloth covering her eyes. It’s blinding on the reveal, and she recoils from the pain. A hiss of breath escapes through clenched teeth and she sways, nearly tumbling over onto her side. He catches her before she can, cradling her frame with one arm and letting out a hollow cough of his own. Similar injuries. Similar fights. Both alive.

“I’ve got you, sinner.”

She wets her lips, her ears pinned flat against her head as she leans in. Foreheads bumping gently, her trembling fingers reaching to slide across his cheek. She ignores the grime, ignores the viscera, ignores the pain and only focuses on the warmth she can feel. Comfort. Familiarity. _Home,_ she reminds herself, _he’s home._.

Scarred fingers hold her gently as the war around them stops howling. Things go quiet. Flames lick at the edges as they wind down. The sun splatters the sky in pinks, oranges, reds as it dips below the horizon, sinking further and further until it can give way to the moon’s distant embrace. He mirrors the feeling. He holds her there for as long as she needs to stop shaking. 

And when she does, she pats the roof of her mouth with her tongue to dampen it so she can speak without it all scratching out hoarse.

“It was the right thing to do. Granson. It was the right thing.”

She sounds faint. Not all there. Half gone, he thinks, and he takes the time to look her in the eyes. There’s some gloss there, daring to spread across the whole surface, but she’s clinging on desperately to consciousness. One of his thumbs wipes away blood from her nose. It smears across pallid skin. It’s all too grim. But he nods anyway.

“Yeah. It was the right thing.”

The Warrior is content with her words parroted back to her. Her fingers paw at him, a weak attempt at holding on. Deeper breaths, now. She can feel every ache. The ice does its best to numb and to mend. It works slower than she wants it to. It works slower than it ever has. Melted down to a fraction of what it had been during the battle before, where innocent lives were spared. Saved. Rescued and regarded as worthy of living out their lives.

For a moment, the mourner worries. He worries that they were too selfless. His hand moves to her neck and it feels along for a pulse. Her heart beats strong. There is hope left. She refuses to fade; it’s been too long of a time spent fighting to let go now. In contrast to his work, he becomes selfish and scoops her up off the ground. He grabs hold of her weapon and pushes it into her hands, understanding its importance to her. And he staggers off, gritting teeth through the pain.

He doesn’t remember when he collapses. He doesn’t remember when either of them were carried to hospice. All he sees when his eyes slowly blink open and readjust is a crystalline ceiling. All he feels when he tries to sit up is an aching pressure in his chest, and a strain of bandages. _Fuck._

“Where is she?”

Granson’s voice is hoarse on the outbreak. Chessamile swivels on her heel and immediately tends to him, a gentle hand trying to usher him back down. She gestures to the side where a handful of nurses are tending to his dear Warrior. Her aether is unstable, she tells him. Like a threatening supernova. He stares holes into the woman and despite the anesthesia running through his body, bogging his mind and limbs down, he pushes past the curtain to see.

She’s at peace. The most peaceful he’s ever seen her. 

And it breaks his blackened heart.

He staggers backward, unable to hear Chessamile’s complaints through the swimming sound of his blood rushing in his ears and his heart hammering against his ribcage. It’s a painful feeling; maybe he bruised one or two in the conflict, too. He pieces it all together. He breathes in the fumes of a variety of unknown chemicals that will do unknown things. 

The mourner rests against the bed and he stares at four different hands in his lap, vision doubling. There’s a rough diagonal cut across one of his palms from holding her blade, now bandaged and taken care of with antiseptic. All of it burns, but he swallows the flames and has to ask.

“She’ll be alright, won’t she?”

Chessamile cannot lie to him, and so she doesn’t. She tells him there’s a chance for failure, but she’s fighting. Tooth and nail. As she always does. As he knows her to do.

For the first time since entering Spagyrics, peace falls like a veil over his features as his head cranes back, as he lets the dim light of the room wash over him, as he accepts the fate where it falls, and as he too slips into the dark unknown, consciousness escaping him.

 _It was the right thing_ , he remembers as the dark remembers him. _Listen. Listen to our voice._

It was the right thing.


	25. paternal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 25\. PATERNAL  
> His arms are wrapped around his family. The family that had come to him in the darkest hour. No, he thinks—the brightest one.

Children had never been completely off the table. Not for Granson, who once had vague visions of harboring a family and perhaps fostering with Milinda. It went by the wayside after the tragedy. It was the last thing on his mind, barely a consideration, and more a blip on the radar. A possibility, but one that had dimmed considerably. A faded memory. 

But here he is now, in the dead of night. His eyes stare into the fireplace across the way, but his arms are wrapped around his family. The family that had come to him in the darkest hour. _No,_ he thinks— _the brightest one._ When the light was at its highest, when it blazed an aggressive trail across all of Norvrandt, it was when she found him.

But the woman he calls his wife is fast asleep now, curled up into his side. Her arms are wound around their newest, their youngest. With ebony hair like his mother but with the burning scarlet eyes of his father, he clings to her as he knows nothing else. Fierce like a lion, he’d marked him. Leo would be his name. He’s shown a liking to it with his toothy smiles and his determination to go everywhere, anywhere.

Kieran, their oldest, is folded up against Granson’s opposite side. His arms are wrapped around his father’s, and the two teal-shaded ears atop his head are flopped down as he snores. He’s as happy as can be in his slumber, albeit a bit shifty. He’s never been able to stay still, especially not around his brother. But when they’re all together like this, late at night, things become different.

It’s peaceful. Crackling embers mix with snoring. Nightmares plague him intermittently, and so Granson is cautious about when he sleeps and how he sleeps. It’s easier surrounded by what he has, who he loves. And easier still when he looks down upon them, when he sees himself in them, and when he sees her in them. When his fingers cradle their faces, scars against soft, against pure, against whole.

He doesn’t feel worthy of this chance. Not exactly. He has the Warrior of Darkness to thank for everything. And sometimes he considers telling her. Sometimes he lets the words hang on tongue but they stick too well, and he ends up showing it in steady affections. His thumb across glacial skin. His lips to hers. Not all at once, often in waves…

But Granson looks at his boys and his heart aches sweetly. He realizes it’s a pipe dream come to some miraculous fruition before him. His hand attempts to move despite Kieran’s iron grip, and he smooths his fingers through strands that mirror his own. Loosen out knots. In his dead slumber, the boy stirs slightly. The feeling distracts him, and he wiggles to adjust himself, wanting to get more comfortable.

“Da…?”

“Yeah, Ki?”

“Love you.”

His words are soft and slurred, barely able to be heard above the growling of the fireplace. But Granson hears them, and it nearly brings him to tears. He has to breathe in deeply as his head leans down, as his lips press to the crown of his head, as he pats him gently on the back.

Instincts overwhelm. It feels right. It must be right.

“I love you too, Ki. Go back to sleep.”

So his son does, the grin on his face squished against the arm of his protector.

He realizes, in this moment, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

And it’s one more thing to thank her for.


	26. splinter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 26\. SPLINTER  
> !! NSFW. TW: Choking, hallucinations, grief.
> 
> In the pitch black, paramours return with a vengeance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's smut to end the month with, ladies, enbies, and gentlemen. This was an idea I had toyed with for some time because I never really wanted to merely gloss over the obvious sorrow that came with taking up a new lover after Milinda's death. This is an attempt at making things right, so to say.
> 
> It's a bit dark and overall fairly heavy, so I may write an extra prompt to lighten it; it's worth noting that all of this is consensual as I tried to highlight very adamantly through the whole thing!
> 
> But this is the end of FFXIVWrite2020, and I'm so thankful to have been able to be part of it. Many thanks to Moen for organizing the whole thing, and many thanks to my friends and the other readers who have given me so much encouragement throughout the month. I'm very happy to have brought Granson and Rax to life through my words and even more so that so many people have read and taken enjoyment in what I've done. I hope I can continue to write for them even past this point, assuming the inspiration stays.
> 
> Thank you, thank you, thank you. ♥

In the pitch black, paramours return with a vengeance. Their smiles cut their faces in half with malice, and they’re brandishing hacksaws prepared to sever hearts in two. Splinter them in half and get away with what was stolen from them. They’re not real, not precisely; there’s phantasms of a past time, of what may have been considered a better life. Their fingers brush against open wounds and their nails dig in to perpetuate the pain. 

Constant reminders. But that’s all they are: reminders. 

They spur an idle idea. Something distant. Something almost taboo with how sinister it felt. To move on was the end goal. Their relationship was cemented on anger, on fury, on love and on loss. But to get past the loss, acceptance needed to happen. Neither of them were so sure that it ever did, and it was why the concept floated into the air.

Now her hands are around his throat. She can barely make out the outline of his frame in the dark. His fingers grip her hips as she’s on top of him, and so she knows he’s there. A lot of conversation happened in the wings before this. Restless as they both are and tired of seeing their same demons dance between their dreams, they turn to this.

She squeezes. He returns the gesture as an acknowledgement. _Go on._ His eyes are burning in the shifting temperatures of the room. Bare skin makes constant friction, and she has to let out an exhale as she exerts herself. Not too much. Maybe not enough. Wordless understanding settles thick in the air between them, and her fingers begin to clench tighter.

His pulse leaps and shudders and throbs under her hands. Inside, it’s all the same. In the dark, the faces shift. _Milinda, _he realizes, and one of his hands swipes upward to touch the phantom’s face. She smiles at him as he teeters on the edge, nearly suspended in limbo. The heat that floods him is quelled by the ice of the woman who’s riding him, hips rolling in steady waves. He can’t help but rock back into her, his mind flooded with visceral emotions of a time where this was normal. Where he could clutch his beloved’s face, where he could feel along her skin and be reminded of a life with her.__

__It feels wrong. She can see the outline of his smile in the dark and how genuine it feels. She can feel the shudder of his body in reaction to her aether. He touches her and she wants to apologize for it, but it’s what they agreed to, and now he’s elsewhere. He’s having his final moments with his once-upon-a-time wife, and she’s the direct gateway._ _

__Tighter. Both her walls and her hands, squeezing down on him like vices. His breath strains as does his cock and he’s struggling to keep it together. His hand moves from her face to the back of her neck, pawing at her, trying to push her down closer so he can kiss her. He does, and his mind conjures up the theory that she tastes just the same. Cherries, a distant scent of lavender. It’s almost enough to make him cry had he not shed all of his tears a long time ago. His fingers drag through her hair as their foreheads touch, as they share in the tender moment, as they linger._ _

__She whispers that she loves him. The same voice. The same tone. His lips part but he finds that he can’t speak. His breaths are coming too short, and a sudden desperation fills him. He’s so lost in her, in this false reality, he forgets why they were there in the first place. The dark had melted away, but now it comes at him in a rush. _Listen. Listen to our heartbeat.__ _

__Faster now._ _

__She picks up the pace and her nails almost dig in. She loosens just slightly to keep him there, and his other hand removes from her hip to place over her heart. _Listen._ It races, thrumming steadily. _ _

__Closer now._ _

__His teeth grit as he tries to hold on. No, not this soon. No, it’s only just begun. Milinda’s face is wavering in his blurry vision. He kisses her. Again, again, again, he kisses her like he’s going to lose her. It’s the same feeling now. Anger. A refusal._ _

__Harder now._ _

__He controls the pace. The collision is almost bruising. He’s almost there and he needs her to come undone with him. In these last few moments, he’s relentless as he gasps for breath in between words on her lips. Apologies. Promises to remember. He thinks he’s almost gone. He thinks he’ll join her. She tells him she forgives him, and suddenly it’s all pure. All white. All bliss._ _

__Let go._ _

__They come together._ _

__Her hands loosen and she collapses against him. The ghost fades away, and what’s left are two lovers in the present. They don’t quite bask in the afterglow. They sink in it. His mind teeters, but he feels more at peace than he has in a long time. He doesn’t realize tears have formed in his eyes; he only notices when they slide down his cheeks as he gulps down air he’s been deprived of._ _

__The headboard behind them has splintered across the way, making the bed they lay on unstable. Their heaving chests, their bodies still intertwined, and the sweet ache of their hearts allows for them to ignore it so long as they stay together._ _

__Frigid fingertips drag their way through teal strands, trying to soothe the influx of heat. There’s a weightlessness to his body now; he barely feels as though he’s real and as though he’s ascended himself, somewhere beyond. Somewhere new. His head turns as he tries to gather himself, and he buries his nose in her hair._ _

__Cherries. Lavender. He breathes her in, and he thanks her._ _

__She only acknowledges it with a kiss, and this time she tastes like the storm she is. Back to reality. Back to her._ _

__And this time, there is no pain._ _

__Only a fresh beginning._ _


End file.
